Prolific sex offender gets seven years
Judge imposes jointly recommended sentence on Michael Sorenson, 40, of Noonan, who abused 17 underage victims over course of several years throughout province
Warning: This article includes graphic details of sex crimes against minors.
Twenty charges listing 17 victims. Another 57 identified victims who declined to participate in prosecutions. Dozens of unidentified victims captured in photos and on video.
A single sex offender, sentenced to seven years in prison.
Those numbers offer a snapshot of the case against Michael Sorenson, 40, of Route 10 in Noonan, who was back in Fredericton provincial court Friday for sentencing.
He pleaded guilty in February to a long list of sexual offences - 22 in all.
Among them were including several counts each of sexual assault, sexual touching, making child pornography, possessing child porn and voyeurism, all perpetrated over the course of more than a decade, from 2008 to 2021.
Court heard previously Sorenson had a proclivity for teenage boys and young men.
Crown prosecutor Karen Lee and defence lawyer T.J. Burke offered a joint submission on sentence of seven years, and Judge Scott Brittain accepted it, noting it fell within the established range of sanctions for such crimes given the circumstances of the specific charges in the case.
Lee filed a table of precedents in support of the joint recommendation that she argued reflected the seriousness of Sorenson’s crimes but also the mitigating factors that the court had to consider.
“This was a situation where Mr. Sorenson used his position as an employer in order to gain access to young men,” she said.
He would cajole teenage boys into sexual activities “for his own sexual enjoyment,” the prosecutor said.
However, she said the sexual assaults and touching leaned toward the lower end of the spectrum for sex crimes. It’s the fact that Sorenson recorded the sexual activities in photos and videos that stands out as the more serious of the crimes to which he’s admitted, Lee argued.
Sorenson captured images of underage victims in the nude or engaged in sexual activity, she said, but also surreptitiously recorded youths and young men when they had expectations of privacy, such as when they used the bathroom at his home in Noonan.
The number of victims is aggravating as well, she said, as is the length of time over which he committed his crimes.
More victims than those listed in charges
“We have 17 identified victims [in the charges],” Lee said.
The identities of those victims are protected by a court-ordered publication ban.
However, the prosecutor added, there were another 57 identified victims who declined to participate in the police investigation process.
Furthermore, she said, there are dozens of unidentified victims seen in images found on the many digital devices RCMP officers seized from Sorenson’s home in Noonan.
The boys and young men the offender violated, manipulated and recorded - identified or otherwise - weren’t the only victims, the prosecutor said.
“Their families are victims as well,” Lee said.
Sorenson met one of his victims through his church, court heard, and others for having worked for their families.
Lee said he manipulated parents to gain access to their sons.
Most of the offences were perpetrated against young men who worked for Sorenson, either at his travelling petting zoo or agricultural business, she said, and in the process, he also tainted their first job experiences.
“They’re all at the age where that really matters,” Lee said.
That affects their ability to trust future employers, she argued.
Another aggravating factor was the age difference between Sorenson and his victims, she said.
It’s not as though he was just a few years older than his victims, the prosecutor said, noting he was twice their age or more.
“This is someone who ought to have known better,” Lee said.
Seven years for the number and seriousness of the offences might seem on the low end to some, she said, but the court had to consider several mitigating factors in the offender’s favour.
Chief among them, the prosecutor said, was how Sorenson’s guilty pleas spared the many victims the ordeal of coming to court, being seen and having to testify.
While there’s a publication ban in effect protecting their identities, Lee said, that protection only goes so far. The guilty pleas made it so they didn’t have to come to court and testify before a courtroom full of people, she said.
“Our system is adversarial,” said Burke, noting cross-examination is rarely a pleasant experience for any witness.
“What it’s important to recognize, of course, is that there’s been a high level of co-operation.”
An emphasis on rehabilitation
He noted that in the United States, a list of crimes such as the ones Sorenson committed would lead to a sentence lasting decades behind bars, but the Canadian criminal justice system embraces a different approach.
“In Canada, of course, we have restraint,” Burke said.
A sentence in Canada isn’t intended to punish, he argued, but to meet the specific principles of sentencing as outlined in the Criminal Code. Among them, court heard, as denunciation and deterrence, but also rehabilitation.
Lee agreed that Sorenson presents as an excellent candidate for rehabilitation, given his lack of a prior record and expressions of remorse.
The lawyers both argued the seven-year term meets the objectives of sentencing.
For someone like Sorenson, who’s never been in trouble before, the prosecutor said, such a prison term is a daunting and onerous one.
“I do believe that seven years is a significant sentence,” Lee said.
Burke said the sentence “will not offend the public interest.”
He pointed out that while the crimes of voyeurism and production of child pornography are serious, Sorenson didn’t distribute the material. Once such images get out on the internet, he said, they’re there forever. That didn’t happen in this case, he said.
Sorenson, speaking briefly from the prisoner’s dock in the courtroom Friday, apologized for his actions.
“I just want to clarify there’s no ill will towards anybody,” he said.
Judge Scott Brittain agreed with Crown and defence counsel’s representations, but he took the time in rendering his decision to emphasize the aggravating and mitigating elements of the case.
“Mr. Sorenson clearly groomed several of his young and impressionable employees,” he said, and in doing so, he abused a position of trust and authority over them.
Sorenson’s criminality has a long reach, as he’s not only scarred the victims emotionally, but shook so many families at their core.
‘Invisible mental scars’
The judge noted 14 of the victims listed in the charges declined to submit victim-impact statements, but three did.
They weren’t read aloud in court Friday, but Brittain reviewed some of the pain the young men poured out on those pages.
One victim reported he has such anxiety over what Sorenson did that he has scarring on the inside of his cheeks from chewing at them.
Another victim wrote he has deep trust issues now after going through what he described as the most difficult experience of his life.
“It has caused me shame and embarrassment,” that victim wrote. “The trauma is always front of mind.”
Yet another victim said he’s had suicidal ideations, Brittain noted, adding that his parent has limited that victim’s access to hunting equipment out of fear of what might happen.
It’s clear from this case and countless others in which children are abused sexually, he said, that these crimes leave “invisible mental scars” that can last lifetimes.
“I want Mr. Sorenson’s victims to know that their many voices are heard,” the judge said.
But he added that a focus on rehabilitation sets Canada’s approach to criminal justice apart, even as precedents are directing judges to ratchet up sentences for sex offences against children.
In additional to the recommended prison term, Brittain ordered Sorenson to submit a DNA sample for inclusion in a criminal database, to register as a sex offender for 20 years following his release, to refrain from possessing firearms and other weapons for 10 years after his release and to have no contact with the victims for the duration of his sentence.
The judge also imposed orders under Section 161 of the Criminal Code, barring Sorenson from being at any public place such as a park, pool, playground, schoolyard or daycare centre where minors can be expected to be present, to seek no employment or volunteer work placing him in a position of authority over children, and to have no contact with minors unless supervised.
He also ordered that items seized that the offender used in the commission of his many crimes be forfeited to the Crown.
Brittain said he hopes the sentence offers some measure of closure for the victims and their families.
“I know it’s incredibly challenging,” he said, wishing them well going forward.
The judge also urged Sorenson to avail himself of rehabilitative programs offered in prison.
Lee withdrew 11 counts from the total of 33, but she noted they were mainly duplicate charges that stemmed from other offences to which Sorenson had pleaded guilty.
History of the case
Sorenson’s crimes came to light after police received a tip he would host “parties for young, teen men where he would get teens intoxicated and would then engage in a variety of games resulting in the teens participating in dares and undressing - that images would be taken of these events,” according to an agreed statement of facts filed with the court at the time of the guilty pleas.
That led RCMP investigators to a victim listed in the charges as A.B. (not his initials), who reported that Sorenson got him to touch himself for a sexual purpose in front of him. That happened in Fredericton in 2014, when the victim as was 15 years old.
That victim said he believed there were other victims out there, which led the RCMP to discover it had received a prior complaint about Sorenson reporting criminal conduct back in 2007.
A larger investigation was launched, leading police to get a search warrant for Sorenson’s home in Noonan on June 29, 2020.
Digital storage devices containing “numerous images and videos of young nude males who were masturbating on camera,” the agreed statement said, and many of those videos were recorded in Sorenson’s bedroom.
“There were also numerous images and videos of males standing on top of a donkey in the nude while Michael Sorenson was holding a leash,” the statement says.
“There was even one video where it shows Michael Sorenson positioning a camera so that an unknown male could ride the donkey in the nude.”
Evidence of Snapchat and Instagram messages were found in which Sorenson enticed teenage boys to model for him in the nude.
In one such chat, he shared a photo of a naked teenager on a donkey, asking the recipient of the message to “Like the naked donkey challenge… jackpot is $1000.”
As more victims were identified and interviewed, they reported that Sorenson would groom them and ask them to do sexual things for him.
The voyeurism offences stemmed often from secret videos he’d made of boys he’d hired to work for him, often in the bathroom of his family’s home in Noonan where those workers would shower after a hard day’s work.
"Again, Sorenson had surreptitiously installed a spy camera in the washroom of his parents' house to catch the young male employees going into and coming out of the shower," the statement says.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.
7 years is not enough IMO. There’s enough there for far more. I’m glad it wasn’t 1-3 years, that would have been terrible and embarrassing for NB. But still.
Pedophiles every where today . This man was talked bout for years and nothing done . Way to many pedophiles in NB . Watch your kids as they are out there . 7 years is nothing - - Holy hell