2 days ago
Manitoba court resentences man who pleaded guilty after trying to lure child on Craigslist
A Manitoba judge erred in allowing a man who pleaded guilty of child luring to serve his sentence outside jail, the province's highest court has ruled.
The man was arrested after arranging to meet a Winnipeg police officer posing as a 14-year-old girl on Craigslist, offering her $50 to sexually touch her and keep her underwear. The sentencing judge imposed a conditional sentence of two years less a day.
Last month, Manitoba's Court of Appeal granted an appeal by the Crown and resentenced the accused to 18 months to be served in custody.
The court said the previous conditional sentence was not proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the accused's degree of responsibility.
"This offence was serious," the court said in a written decision issued May 29. "There was repeated contact of a sexual nature. The accused made a number of requests to purchase sex from a victim he knew was a child."
The decision said the then-33-year-old man met "Katie" on the classified site while pretending he was 19. He repeatedly asked to meet her during the span of a week. Police arrested him at the place he'd arranged to meet the child.
The man pleaded guilty. A psychological consultation report found he struggled with feelings of anxiety and depression due to the loss of a friend and a serious relationship as well as isolation from the COVID-19 pandemic, which "led to risky sexual behaviour."
The report said that about three years prior to the arrest, he began contacting people through online ads to try to meet women "largely to satisfy an ongoing 'underwear fetish,'" the decision said.
The sentencing judge said they disagreed that conditional sentences could only be imposed in exceptional circumstances, adding that those principles can be "achieved by giving the offender a chance to serve his sentence in the community."
The Court of Appeal said sexual offences against children are "serious crimes that often warrant strict sanctions."
"There were mitigating factors in the present case," the Court of Appeal said. "However, the mitigating factors were not extraordinary. Furthermore, the accused's personal factors, while important, take on a reduced role where the principles of denunciation and deterrence are paramount."
The accused will receive credit for time served before the conditional sentence was suspended pending the appeal in March.
A three-year supervised probation order is still in place, the decision said.
