The Alberta Court of Appeal has upped the sentence of a child pornographer and child abuser, saying the trial judge made a mistake when refusing to accept a joint sentence submission from the defence and the Crown and declining to view the images made by the accused pedophile.
The accused, who is unnamed and referred to as R.P.A., amassed a collection of child pornography beginning in 2014 and sexually abused his daughter, named only as K.S. in court documents, between 2016 and 2022, and made child pornography featuring her, “mirroring some of the abuse depicted in his acquired collection,” the court ruling says.
He was arrested in 2022 and, on the first day of his trial in 2024, pleaded guilty to charges of sexual interference, making child pornography and possessing child pornography. The graphic collection of child abuse material comprised thousands upon thousands of images and video recordings, including 288 of his daughter, who was four years old when the abuse began.
In the sentencing hearings — the Crown and defence had both called for 18 years imprisonment — the judge expressed concern that similar cases had ended with lower sentences. The Crown “invited (the judge) to view the child sexual abuse material (CASM) to better understand the severity of the offences,” but the judge, Jordan Stuffco, declined.
“Given the explicit descriptions of the CSAM, I did not need to view the images. It was clear the offender committed grave, disturbing offences. Viewing the images would objectively add nothing to what the offender admitted,” Stuffco wrote in his sentence.
The judge also found that sentences of higher than 14 years were “reserved for offenders committing crimes ‘more depraved and egregious than those perpetrated by the offender in the case at bar,’” the Court of Appeal noted. In his sentence, Stuffco concluded that the joint submission was “unhinged and so far out of the appropriate range it offends the public interest test and reflects a breakdown of the proper functioning of the administration of justice.”
The three-member panel of the Alberta Court of Appeal concluded that Stuffco had wrongly opted for a sentence of 14 years less 198 days served.
The judge also erred, the Court of Appeal concluded, in declining to admit as evidence and view the images and videos of child abuse that R.P.A. had kept and created.
“In the case of possession or making of child pornography, the images
are
the crime, so they are by definition relevant,” the court wrote.
However, the justices note that across the country, some judges are refusing to view child sexual abuse material at trial, arguing that they could be prejudiced by viewing such content, that written descriptions appropriately cover off what the material includes and that it contributes to the revictimization of those depicted.
“In short, it appears from a review of these decisions that a presumption has emerged that viewing child sexual abuse material is inherently and deeply prejudicial,” the Court of Appeal wrote.
Other judges, however, have concluded that viewing the material is important to get a full picture of what crime was committed as written descriptions might diminish the shockingness of what occurred.
While the Court of Appeal declined to make a declaration that a judge must always view such images, it did conclude that there are times that the images must be viewed: “In this circumstance, there may be no words that adequately convey the gravity of the offences and the moral culpability of the offender.”
In the end, the Court of Appeal concluded that the judge, in determining that the joint submission was too harsh — a major disagreement between himself and counsel for the Crown and the accused — should have viewed the image submissions.
“He should have done so to ensure that he was not failing to grasp something about the nature and gravity of the offences that could only be appreciated by viewing the material,” the justices wrote.
“As she grows over the next four years, baby teeth are lost, fewer hairbows are worn, and the normalization of the abuse becomes evident.”
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