A Richmond man convicted of four counts of Internet luring and possession and distribution of child pornography has been sentenced to three years in jail.
In imposing sentence on Stephen Reha, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan said he agreed with the Crown that the criminal counts should each call for a year in prison, to run consecutively.
But in a summary ruling Monday, the judge said that given Reha’s circumstances, the sentence should be reduced somewhat due to what he called the “totality principle” of sentencing.
“Although it appears that Mr. Reha has limited insight into these offences and in fact denies them, notwithstanding his participation is manifest in the materials he possessed, none of the luring offences resulted in actual sexual conduct,” said McEwan.
“I think it quite unlikely that he poses that sort of danger.”
The judge was referring to the fact that while Reha used the Internet to get four underage girls to send explicit photos of themselves to him, he did not commit sexual assaults.
The Crown had argued that despite the absence of sexual contact, the offences were serious and called for a 6 1/2-year jail term.
Reha told the judge that he wanted to apologize for his actions and that they weren’t intentional.
Asked by the judge what he meant by that, he said: “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I didn’t mean to break the law. I feel terrible about it.”
Court heard that Reha used Kik Messenger, an instant message application for mobile devices, to target girls between the ages of 13 and 16, sending them explicit photos of himself.
In return, the girls, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban in the case, sent him back explicit photos of themselves.
Over the course of several months in 2013, Reha would then distribute those explicit photos to other men collecting child pornography.
RCMP executing a search warrant at his home also seized a number of other photos of child porn, as well as child porn videos.
In addition to the jail sentence, the judge ordered Reha to register with the sexual offender registry, have no contact with any of his victims and forfeit all of the child porn seized from him by police. He was also ordered to provide a DNA sample and pay a $200 victim surcharge for the criminal counts.
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