By Bill Sawchuk, St. Catharines Standard
St. Catharines, Ontario Courthouse
A 34-year-old Niagara Falls, Ontario man pleaded guilty Monday in a St. Catharines courtroom to two child pornography charges and two child sex charges.
The guilty plea was the result of a major Internet child sexual abuse investigation by Niagara Regional Police, which they called Project Iceberg.
In an earlier court proceeding, a Niagara mother pleaded guilty to exploiting her daughter for her own gain, including making her four-year-old available to be sexually assaulted by others. She is now the subject of an ongoing dangerous offender hearing.
The man in court Monday isn’t related to the woman or her daughter. All their names are subject to a publication ban to protect the identity of the four-year-old victim.
He met the woman on social media through a shared interest in child pornography, assistant Crown attorney Pat Vadaccino said while reading from an agreed statement of facts that was part of a plea deal.
The two discussed sexual assaulting the woman’s daughter through explicit text messages.
Text messages also revealed he travelled to the woman’s home.
Niagara Falls, Canada
Judge Joseph Nadel accepted the plea deal. He ordered the man undergo a forensic psychiatric assessment before he is sentenced. The man is due back in court Feb. 17 to begin that process.
The man pleaded guilty to one count of making and one count of possessing child pornography. The man also pleaded guilty to making arrangements to commit a sexual offence against a child and one count of exposing his genitals to a child.
In an equally disturbing revelation, court heard that the man was in a common-law relationship with another woman and was the stay-at-home caregiver to three of his own children, including five- and six-year-old daughters. He also has two other children from a previous relationship.
In the text messages seized by the police and read into the record by Vadaccino, he said he was going to sexually assault his own daughter — “when the time is right.”
Vadaccino told the court she didn’t know which of his children he was talking about.
She said Family and Children’s Services had interviewed the children; and, at this point, there is no evidence they have been assaulted.
The mother of three of man’s children was in court to hear the plea. She is no longer with him and devastated by the revelations.
“I wanted to hear the words come out of his mouth,” the 31-year-old woman from Niagara Falls said outside the courtroom after the hearing. “At the video remands, he had a smirk on his face like he had done nothing wrong. I don’t think he should ever get out of jail.
I don't think so either, but this is Canada and that's not going to happen. Hopefully, he won't get out until all those children are adults.
“My kids’ lives have been turned upside down. He was doing this while I was away at work supporting my family.
“He quit his job because we didn’t have child care. I was working 60 hours a week to support my family. They knew Mommy was always working, and Daddy was there to take care of them.”
She said on the day he was arrested, she was at work. Police smashed her door down and tore her house apart looking for evidence.
“When I got home, he was gone, already arrested, but I was a wreck. I had no idea what was going on."
Surely the police could have handled that a little better, or a lot better. Police need to review their procedures for such cases. In fact, the woman might have grounds for a lawsuit.
“He had a separate text messaging box on his phone. That’s where he was doing this stuff. I’m not technological. I don’t know a lot about computers and stuff like that.
“I am glad the police got him before I did — or I would have been facing charges.”
Yeah, you and me both!
The man was one of six people arrested on 77 charges in August 2016 following a nine-month investigation by the NRP as part of Project Iceberg.
The investigation began in November 2015 as the NRP’s criminal investigation branch was probing the aggravated assault of a 38-year-old Niagara man.
During the stabbing investigation, officers heard allegations about the possible sexual assault of a young child. Detectives from the child abuse unit and Internet child exploitation unit were called in.
The investigation eventually drew in more than a dozen units within the NRP as well as assistance from Toronto Police Service’s sex crimes-child exploitation section.
More than 60 electronic devices were seized for forensic examination, including computers, cellphones, memory cards, gaming consoles, laptops, tablets, iPods, cameras, CDs and DVDs.
There were also several saved messages from Nightlinechat, a phone chatline. Several of the recordings were conversations where the mother offered to send sexually explicit photographs of her daughter to unknown males in exchange for money.
