Sex offender’s sentencing hearing delayed
Michael Sorenson, 40, of Noonan, abused 17 underage victims through sexual contact, illegal video recordings of them in compromised situations
Warning: This report includes graphic details of sexual crimes against minors.
The sentencing hearing for a prolific sex offender who committed almost two dozen sex crimes involving 17 minors was postponed this week to give him time to fulfil orders for his agricultural business.
Michael Sorenson, 40, of Route 10 in Noonan, pleaded guilty in late February to 23 sex-related crimes, including numerous counts of sexual assault, sexual touching, possession and creation of child pornography, and voyeurism.
He committed the offences over the course of several years, between 2008 and 2021.
Sorenson’s sentencing hearing on those many crimes was scheduled for July 21 - this coming Friday - but he and his defence lawyer, T.J. Burke, appeared before provincial court Judge Scott Brittain on Monday to ask for it to be adjourned.
“Mr. Sorenson was aware of the fact he was going to be sentenced on Friday,” Burke said, noting his client has been preparing for it since this past winter.
Since that time, the lawyer said, Sorenson has been working on his agricultural business. The operation supplies local farming operations with hay, he said, among other services.
Burke said the unusually wet weather the capital region has experienced this summer threw a wrench in those plans, creating delays in the growing and harvesting of the product.
“Nobody planned such a horrible, rainy season,” he said.
If Sorenson was to go to prison as scheduled Friday, the defence counsel told Brittain, 270 customers waiting on their orders would be left in the lurch, as would Sorenson’s employees.
That wouldn’t be fair to farmers and other customers, Burke said, so the defence was seeking a short adjournment to give Sorenson a chance to make one last push to wrap up his business obligations.
Crown prosecutor Karen Lee, who appeared in court by telephone Monday, said delaying the sentencing after so many months was problematic.
“The Crown is not in a position to agree to this request,” she said.
Burke gave her a heads-up on the request for the adjournment, the prosecutor said, and she checked with victim services to see if a short postponement would be of assistance in the effort to gather victim-impact statements ahead of the sentencing.
Instead, Lee said, she learned that several victims and family members had been planning on attending Friday’s hearing.
The courts are in the habit of considering how delays in judicial processes and hearings can affect defendants negatively, she said, but victims can be hit hard by delays as well.
“It is advantageous for the victims to have this put behind them,” Lee said.
Brittain acknowledged Lee’s concerns and appreciated the perspective for which she was advocating, but he noted the requested delay isn’t for a long one.
The judge granted the adjournment and set the sentencing hearing over to Sept. 29.
Burke reiterated Monday he and Lee were going to offer a joint recommendation on sentence.
What he did
The identities of all of Sorenson’s victims are protected by a court-ordered publication ban.
The court received an agreed statement of facts from the Crown and defence Feb. 24, detailing all 23 crimes Sorenson admitted.
He’d originally been scheduled to stand trial that day on 33 counts, but pleaded guilty to those 23 charges.
The remaining 10 counts will be withdrawn.
Sorenson’s criminal conduct came to the attention of police after a “Cyber tip” was received indicating the offender was in the habit of “hosting 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,” the agreed statement says.
That led RCMP investigators to a victim identified in the document as A.B., which are not his initials. Sorenson counselled that boy to touch himself for a sexual purpose in Fredericton the summer of 2014, when he was 15 years old.
That victim told police he believed there were others, and the Mounties discovered the force had received a prior complaint about Sorenson dating back to 2007.
That discovery prompted a larger investigation and the securing of a search warrant for Sorenson’s home in Noonan.
Police seized numerous digital storage devices that “contained numerous images and videos of young nude males who were masturbating on camera,” the agreed statement says.
Many videos were recorded shot in Sorenson’s bedroom, as his green couch was visible in the footage.
“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.”
Computers and digital devices also yielded evidence of Snapchat and Instagram conversations in which Sorenson enticed teenage boys to model for him naked.
In one of those chats, he had shared a photo of a nude youth on a donkey calling on the recipient to “Like the naked donkey challenge… jackpot is $1000.”
Victims told officers Sorenson would groom them and ask them to do sexual things for him. Some of the teenage victims had worked for him, but the offender also first encountered them when doing work for their families or through church.
After Sorenson first appeared in provincial court in July 2021 on charges alleging sexual offences against the initial two victims, more victims began to come forward, the agreed statement notes.
Sorenson operated a travelling petting zoo, and the RCMP investigation revealed he’d hire teenage boys to work at his Noonan farm where he kept the animals. When those boys would finish for the day, Sorenson offered them the use of the shower in the home.
"Again, Sorenson had surreptitiously installed a spy camera in the washrooms of his parents' house to catch the young male employees going into and coming out of the shower," the statement says.
Not all of the victims recorded in such instances of illegal voyeurism wanted to participate in prosecutions.
Sorenson admitted to voyeurism charges stemming from making those secret recordings of three known victims and several unknown boys - which means that while the 23 charges involve 17 known victims, there were others who have never been identified.
Sorenson also admitted to possessing pornographic images and videos of 11 of his underage victims and making child pornography depicting nine of them.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.
Given the seriousness, obvious crimes against young people, there should be no delay in sentencing.
Well, who care about child victims as long as the hay gets in.