A former manager with B.C.'s Ministry of Children and Family Development has been found guilty of child pornography charges.
The verdict for Edward Owen Berry, issued Tuesday, followed a five-day voire dire that ended with B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ron Tindale finding the evidence investigators had gathered admissible for trial.
According to a statement of facts read into the court record during a hearing at the Prince George courthouse, RCMP found hundreds of images and more than 100 videos of predominantly teenage boys - but also others much younger - performing sexual acts, some with adults.
With the evidence presented, Tindale issued a directed verdict - essentially a finding that there is no basis to reach a different conclusion - that Berry is guilty beyond reasonable doubt of possessing and accessing child pornography.
Prior to his arrest Berry had worked for the MCFD, covering the northeast and north central areas of the province, according a posting on the B.C. College of Social Workers website.
The trouble for Berry began in April 2014 when a fire ripped through a 3200-block Westwood Drive apartment building where he had been living. An employee of a restoration company came across disturbing images on a computer tablet Berry owned and turned it over to the RCMP.
In December 2014, RCMP subsequently executed search warrants on Berry's home in Vancouver and on his secondary home in the 6800 block of Domano Boulevard and seized a tablet, an external hard drive and a laptop from which the images and videos were extracted.
Evidence also showed Berry had been frequenting websites where sexually explicit stories involving boys were posted.
Berry cooperated with investigators, going so far as to provide a code to decrypt images on one of the devices.
Sentencing for Berry will occur following completion of a pre-sentence report with a forensic risk assessment carried out by a psychiatrist.
