A father from a small town outside Edmonton has been charged with incest and sexual exploitation offences allegedly committed against his own daughter. The investigation uncovered nearly 5,000 videos and images across several devices.
The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the underage victim, was arrested by the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT) Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit.
The investigation began in December 2015, when local investigators were tipped off by the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre about possible child pornography being uploaded to the internet.
ICE executed a search warrant at the suspect’s home in May. Police seized seven computers and electronic devices, which were found to contain approximately 4,000 photos and 900 videos of child sexual exploitation. At that time, the suspect was charged with multiple child pornography-related offences.
During the arduous forensic analysis process, investigators found a video which led them to believe the accused was committing sexual offences against his own child.
“This process, the forensic analysis, is a long and laborious process. It doesn’t happen in a short time span,” ICE unit Staff Sgt. Steve Camp said.
“If you can imagine, the technicians have to go through every single image and every single video to categorize it as child porn or not, and then they have to put it in a categorization process and prepare it for court,” Camp explained.
Watch below: Police say the Edmonton-area man is accused of abusing his own daughter and more charges could be laid. Kendra Slugoski reports. Warning: disturbing content.
He singled out the technicians who do that work, calling them the “unsung heroes” of the unit doing the difficult, yet important work. A technician with 10 years experience zeroed in a specific video possibly showing the victim, described as “a youth.”
“To find that one video that is potentially our victim is remarkable,” Camp said. “It was a known-to-known offence. It occurred over a long period of time,” he added.
The suspect was arrested for a second time on Aug. 17, and charged with incest, sexual exploitation and sexual assault.
It’s rare for investigators to lay incest charges.
“In my 25 years, I’ve never been involved in an investigation where that was one of the charges,” Camp said.
The founder of Little Warriors, an organization that provides support to children who have been sexually abused, said she is not shocked by the charges.
“I guess the only part that I’d be shocked at is that he got caught,” Glori Meldrum said. “The majority of sexual assaults against kids – 95 per cent of them – are by people that the kids know that have access, like exactly in this case.
“This is a massive, massive problem. So nothing really shocks me anymore. I am really thrilled that ICE made an arrest, that’s amazing news.”
However, Meldrum questions why the accused was released after he was arrested for the first time in May.
“How much more abuse could she have been saved from?”
ALERT said more charges could be laid.
The suspect was released on bail Thursday with several conditions, including not to contact his daughter and not return home.
The offences allegedly took place in a small town outside of Edmonton, but ALERT didn’t say which community, again, to protect the victim.
“We are focused on victim survival now. It’s a traumatic event,” Camp said.
The accused is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 15.
ALERT is a multi-agency team that tackles serious and organized crime. It is made up of members from the Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat police forces, RCMP and Alberta Sheriffs.
Comments