Ex-teacher get two years for child porn
Upon release from prison, Corey Harvey, 38, formerly of Fredericton, is barred from public places where kids could be present, jobs placing him in authority over them
Warning: This story includes graphic descriptions of sexual abuse of young children.
In imposing a prison term on a former Fredericton teacher who possessed child pornography and created collages, a judge noted Thursday the offender was a victim of childhood sexual abuse himself.
Corey Harvey, 38, of Port Greville, N.S., but formerly of Fredericton, was back in Fredericton provincial court Thursday for sentencing.
He pleaded guilty this summer to two indictable charges: possession of child pornography between Nov. 10, 2015, and March 30, 2022, and creation of child porn between Sept. 10, 2020, and March 7, 2022.
Thursday’s proceeding was relatively quick, as Crown prosecutor Rachel Anstey and defence lawyer Patrick Hurley offered a joint recommendation of two years in prison and had filed briefs in support of that position.
Hurley said his client’s pre-sentence report showed he came from a loving family but faced “serious challenges” when he was a child.
Judge Mary Jane Richards, in rendering her decision on sentence, was more pointed about those “challenges.”
“Mr. Harvey himself was a victim of [sexual] abuse as a child,” she said.
Hurley said the offender has acknowledged his crimes and has taken steps to get counselling.
“He recognizes that he’s got issues,” the defence lawyer said.
Harvey told the court Thursday he has “deep regret and remorse” for what he did, noting he alone is responsible for his crimes.
“I’m really, really sorry that my own pain has caused so much pain for others,” he said.
Richards imposed the requested two-year prison term and ordered Harvey to submit a DNA sample for inclusion in a criminal database, prohibited him from possessing firearms and other weapons for 10 years following his release and imposed a 20-year order under the Sex Offender Information Registration Act.
The judge also impose 20-year orders under Section 161 of the Criminal Code of Canada, barring Harvey from attending public places such as parks, playgrounds and pools where one can expect children to be present; from securing employment, either paid or volunteer, that would place him in a position of authority or trust over minors under the age of 16; and from having unsupervised contact with children except for his own two kids.
He’s also prohibited from accessing Dropbox, the San Francisco-based online file-storage and sharing service, for 20 years.
Dropbox raised alarm
During an early proceeding in the case, court heard that some online activity involving images depicting the sexual abuse of young children came to the attention of the RCMP thanks to a report made by Dropbox after it detected a suspicious file uploaded to its servers.
The RCMP linked the username on the Dropbox account in question to Harvey and his email address with the provincial Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. Harvey, before his arrest, was a teacher who worked with Anglophone School District West.
Police executed search warrants at Harvey’s Fredericton home, and Richards noted Thursday that child pornography was found on an iPhone and iPad.
In total, the RCMP’s internet child exploitation unit found 238 child-porn files, court heard.
Investigators also found a folded titled “Collage,” in which they found 26 composite images that included several of the other downloaded images collected into one.
It was the creation of those collages that constituted the offence of making child pornography.
‘Extremely disturbing images’
Richards said there were a number of mitigating and aggravating factors in the case that the sentence had to address.
Among the elements in Harvey’s favour, she said, were his relatively early guilty pleas, his expressions of remorse, his lack of a prior record and the relatively small size of the collection police discovered in his possession.
However, among the aggravating factors the judge identified were the “extremely disturbing images” the police found.
While the number of illegal images was on the lower end of the spectrum for such crimes, she said, the sexual abuse depicted in them was egregious.
The ages of the victims seen in the files ranged from five to 13 years, Richards said, with some of them showing five-year-olds being penetrated sexually.
When Harvey pleaded guilty June 22 to the crimes, Anstey provided a representative sample of the offending images for the judge to view, and the prosecutor described them as Richards went over them.
Anstey described what the images depicted thusly:
a toddler girl, about three to five years old, in a state of undress;
a girl estimated to be between five and eight years of age, with her shirt up, legs apart and blindfolded;
a girl, five to eight years old, fully nude with her legs spread apart;
a collage of a girl about 12-15 years old, posing nude in a bathroom;
a collage of a girl, about eight to 10 years old, being sexually assaulted and penetrated vaginally;
a girl, aged five to eight, lying down nude with ejaculate on her body;
and a girl, aged five to eight, blindfolded and nude, being penetrated vaginally.
Court heard none of the children seen in the images have been identified by authorities.
Richards said Thursday that while Harvey didn’t have actual contact with the victims seen in the photos, he nevertheless contributed to their trauma by being part of the market that creates a demand for such imagery.
Even in the absence of victim-impact statements before the court, the judge said, it’s clear these children have suffered and continue to suffer profound and long-lasting trauma as a result of the abuse.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.
Not nearly enough. Let’s all wait for him to get out early and reoffend and keep the cycle going.
He's out on parole now.