Former teacher admits to child-porn crimes
Corey Harvey, 37, formerly of Fredericton, was caught with illicit material thanks to a report from Dropbox to authorities; police followed trail to disgraced educator
Warning: This story includes graphic descriptions of sexual abuse of young children.
An alert from an online file-storage service to policing agencies led to a former Fredericton teacher being busted for possessing child pornography, a court heard last week.
Corey Harvey, 37, formerly of Fredericton and now living in Port Greville, N.S., appeared in Fredericton provincial court June 22 to answer to two indictable charges.
He elected to be tried in provincial court and pleaded guilty to possessing child porn between Nov. 10, 2015, and March 30, 2022, and to making child pornography between Sept. 10, 2020, and March 7, 2022.
Crown prosecutor Rachel Anstey said the case arose when Dropbox, the San Francisco-based online file-hosting service, detected a suspected child-porn file being uploaded to its servers.
Dropbox contacted a relevant policing agency, court heard, and the information was eventually relayed to the RCMP’s internet child exploitation (ICE) unit in New Brunswick.
The investigation revealed that the username associated with the file was Corey Harvey, Anstey said, and the email address was one associated with the New Brunswick Department of Education.
The IP address was associated with Harvey’s address in Fredericton at the time, she said, which was confirmed through production orders from the home’s internet provider.
Mounties with the ICE unit secured search warrants for Harvey’s home and vehicle, the prosecutor said, and 24 items were seized, including a laptop computer and other devices.
Anstey said Harvey provided police with a statement but declined to comment on the offences.
“He said he didn’t use Dropbox anymore,” she said.
Officers found 238 images on an iPhone and iPad that were categorized as child pornography, Anstey said.
The iPhone contained a folder labelled “Collage,” she said, and in it were composite images that collected some of the other individual child-porn photos.
It was discovered that Harvey had made 26 collages from other images he’d downloaded, the prosecutor said, and that accounted for the offence of making child pornography.
Police also found an image of a secondary classroom whiteboard on one of the offender’s devices.
Online records show that before his arrest, Harvey, an educator, worked with Anglophone School District West.
Court heard he has two children of his own, but that none of the objectionable images found were of his kids.
Disturbing descriptions
Anstey showed Judge Mary Jane Richards a representative sample of the illegal images, displaying them on a laptop so only Richards could see them in the courtroom Thursday.
However, the prosecutor described aloud what was depicted, offering an unsettling glimpse into the material Harvey had collected.
Among the descriptions Anstey presented to the court were the following:
- 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.
None of the children depicted in the material have been identified, Anstey said.
Throughout the proceedings Thursday, Harvey, his tall frame clad in a dark suit, hung his head low.
He admitted to the facts relayed to the court and said he was pleading guilty voluntarily.
Richards said given the facts of the case and an inevitable jail term, she would normally remand such a defendant pending sentencing, but defence lawyer Patrick Hurley said his client has been free on conditions with no issues since his arrest.
“Mr. Harvey is residing out of province now,” he said.
Anstey suggested the court could replace the police undertaking to which Harvey is subject with a release order with the same conditions.
A release order has greater weight legally if there was to be a breach.
The judge did so, imposing conditions that include having no contact or communication with children under 16 years unless accompanied by another adult who’s aware of Harvey’s crimes, staying away from public places where children can be expected to be present and refraining from accessing the internet unless it’s for work purposes.
Richards scheduled Harvey’s sentencing hearing for Sept. 21.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.
We all know how this is going to end. He will get a 2-3 year sentence and be out in 1 year. Rinse and repeat.
I only just skimmed the article...Please tell me he is NOT teaching in NS