Another local man sentenced for child pornography this week, another finger wagging from the courts.
In August, a 49-year-old man was sentenced to 90 days in jail, to be served Saturdays and Sunday, for possession of child pornography. The former school teacher was also allowed to keep his privacy because a court-ordered publication ban didn't allow The Citizen to name him.
Earlier this month, a 37-year-old Fort St. James woman was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail for making and sending pornographic videos of her son and daughter for a man she met through an online dating site. She gets to keep her anonymity only because naming her would identify her children, the victims of this depraved crime.
This week, Anthony Eric Roughton of Prince George received a slap-on-the-wrist of 20 months in jail for possessing and distributing child pornography. His case is particularly reprehensible because he was using special software in an effort to cover up his online tracks, meaning that his so-called remorse on Thursday at his sentencing hearing were tears of regret that he got caught, not actual guilt for the harm caused by having hundreds of these images, one which showed a toddler and another which showed a bound child.
The outrage over these light sentences is warranted. The faith of Canadians in their legal system is seriously eroded when someone like Robert Cassell gets more than three years for aggravated assault but a criminal like Roughton gets significantly less.
It's not the laws that need to be made tougher, however, it's the courts.
The minimum sentences for accessing, possessing and distributing child pornography are six months, six months and one year, respectively. The maximum sentence for these crimes, however, is 10 years, 10 years and 14 years.
Less concern by Crown lawyers and judges needs to be paid to past precedents and more attention should go to the existing latitude available to punish these people and hopefully deter others. In the vast majority of cases and in all cases involving child pornography, citizens are upset to learn about lax sentences. Good luck finding anyone who would think 14 years in jail for someone like Roughton is too harsh.
Especially when they find out what the sentence really is.
What many people outside of the legal system don't realize is that Roughton will not spend 20 months in jail. Under the law, he's allowed to apply for day parole in six months and full parole just one-third of the way into his sentence, in this case less than seven months.
By law, he will receive statutory release after serving two-thirds of his sentence or just over a year in jail. Although some offenders are ordered to serve out their jail term, most are released with conditions, such as reporting to a parole officer, living in a halfway house and attending counselling sessions, on top of conditions set by the judge at the time of sentencing.
That hardly counts as punishment or deterrence for the severity of this crime.
An argument could be made that the worst punishment Roughton received was The Citizen's reporting of his conviction and the publishing, both online and in print, of his photograph. Even when he gets out, that story, which is far more easily accessible online and through social media than court records, will follow him wherever he goes. Public shaming and humiliation is a horrible practice but we're happy to make exceptions for child pornographers, certainly among the most horrible of offenders.
For the bleeding hearts that believe in rehabilitation and redemption, consider this. At 20 months in jail, Roughton avoids federal prison and the significantly longer and more intensive programs in place to address his addiction, his deviant urges, his mental illness, whatever is going on in his mind that prompts him to sexualize children.
Yet punishment and rehabilitation are actually of secondary importance.
The prime consideration for the courts when dealing with child pornographers should be to protect the most vulnerable members of society from these predators.
Does a 20-month sentence for Roughton accomplish that?
Considering that he will be out of jail before next Christmas, the question is hardly worth asking.
