As a marketing professional, Margaret depended on social media for her livelihood.
And like so many young parents, it was her go-to place to document family milestones and post cute pictures of her kids.
But after a longtime friend was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography, Margaret says she is “relearning how to live life” without social media. The images in question were photos of Margaret’s daughter taken from her online accounts and altered to appear as child sex abuse images.
“Social media is scary,” said Margaret, not her real name. “To find out that innocent pictures were taken by a family friend and used in that way, I had to stop. Social media scares the s—- out of me. I’m not comfortable sharing my kids ever on there anymore. I’ve had to stop working on there.”
Margaret’s one-time friend, a 31-year-old Winnipeg man, pleaded guilty last week to one count of possessing child pornography. Two additional charges of making child pornography and one count of accessing child pornography were stayed by the Crown.
The Free Press is not naming the accused or identifying Margaret by her real name so as to protect the identity of her daughter and provide a fuller accounting of the circumstances surrounding the crime.
Prior to the man entering his guilty plea, court was provided a short synopsis of events leading up to his arrest. Court heard investigators with Winnipeg police’s internet child exploitation unit learned that child sex abuse imagery had been uploaded to various social media platforms from an IP address linked to the man’s St. James home.
Police executed a search warrant at the home last June and seized a cellphone and computer later found to contain more than 1,000 child sex abuse images and 35 sex abuse videos.
Several of the seized videos included images of Margaret’s daughter and another girl positively identified by police.
“The videos depicted an individual viewing a picture of one or both of the children, while narrating his intentions to have sexual intercourse with them,” the man’s lawyer, Adam Hodge, told court.
The man is not admitting that he recorded the videos, “just that (he) possessed them and they were on (his) phone,” Hodge said.
Margaret said the man’s wife, also a close friend at the time, called her when police raided their home. “So, I was aware some kind of investigation was going on,” she said.
It was about two months later, Margaret said, when police called her to say they had found “disturbing” pictures of her daughter in the man’s possession.
“She was never actually harmed, thankfully,” Margaret said.
“It’s hard to even put into words how hard it has been,” she said. “This is a person we trusted… (The man and his wife) would always come for my daughter’s birthday parties … they were literally like family, and then to find out this.”
According to search warrant documents obtained by the Free Press, the man had come to the attention of Winnipeg police attention as early as October 2020 after Australian police alerted them to sexual online chats in which the man purported to be a 15-year-old girl.
Questioned by Winnipeg police, the man “was unable to provide a valid reason why he was purporting to be a young girl on the internet and was asked … to stop all types of inappropriate communication with unknown persons, to which (he) agreed,” the documents said. “It was determined that at this time there were not any children at risk of any harm or exploitation and the file was closed.”
The man remains free on bail. A sentencing date has not been set.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Someone once said a journalist is just a reporter in a good suit. Dean Pritchard doesn’t own a good suit. But he knows a good lawsuit.