Peter Moorhouse, the former president of the Better Business Bureau of Atlantic Canada, has been sentenced to two years in prison for sexual offences involving a teenager.
In a final statement to the judge on Thursday, Moorhouse, 50, blamed his actions on the alleged sexual abuse he suffered as a 12-year-old.
He pleaded guilty in July 2022 to child pornography charges in relation to an incident involving a number of electronic messages between Moorhouse and another man, named Carlos Moraga, that involved a teenage girl. Moorhouse said that he was “playing out a character” and wasn’t aware a real child was involved.
“I created a persona that represented a part of me that I hated,” he said to the judge, adding that he would engage in chatroom conversations where he’d create fictional scenarios that reflected acts that occurred to him when he was young. He said it gave him the “agency and control” that he didn’t have when he was a victim.
“I responded to what I believed was an individual who wanted to be part of a scenario we were playing out. I externalized the person that I had created, the girl that never existed outside my own mind … and in doing so, my actions became as self-destructive as they could possibly be.”
Moraga, the other man involved in this exchange, was charged with sexual interference and making child pornography. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison in June 2023.
Police searched Moraga’s home in January 2021 after “inappropriate messages” were found on his cell phone regarding a 14-year-old girl he knew. Following the search, both men were charged.
The messages between Moraga and Moorhouse, who was using an alias, discussed the 14-year-old girl as well as a 12-year-old.
The Nova Scotia Internet Child Exploitation Unit was able to identify Moorhouse by searching Moraga’s Outlook email account.
“Review of the messages between Moorhouse and Moraga revealed more conversations from January 2021,” a statement of facts read at the time, “where Moorhouse and Moraga talk about having sex with a 14-year-old girl and how Moorhouse would like to watch Moraga have sex with the 12-year-old.”
There were nearly 250 emails between the two men.
‘Ticking time bomb’
Further in his statement on Thursday, Moorhouse said his childhood experiences formed a “ticking time bomb.”
“When it went off, my entire life was blown up and people and organizations that I cared about were caught up in the explosion,” he said, adding that he lost “nearly everything” — including his ability to support himself financially and maintain a relationship with family members.
He said his son legally changed his surname after he became aware of the incident.
“I have nobody else to blame. I should’ve sought help, I didn’t, and that is also my responsibility,” Moorhouse said.
“The only person I’ve ever tried to hurt is myself.”
He said he “assumed” that everything Moraga wrote in his emails was fictional.
“If I had known a real person was involved or at risk, I would’ve never had continued,” he said, admitting the things he wrote were horrible and he regrets his actions.
In a provincial courtroom on Thursday, Moorhouse’s lawyer stated his client had withdrawn a previous charter challenge to the mandatory minimum prison sentences associated with his charges.
Judge Marc Chisholm went on to accept a sentence recommendation, from both the Crown prosecutor and Moorhouse’s counsel, of a total sentence of two years in prison, where he’d serve both 12-month sentences consecutively.
“The court has been assured by both the Crown and defence that this is indeed very much the result of prolonged discussions between the parties,” the judge said, adding that the court believed the mandatory minimum sentence was appropriate when factoring in several circumstances.
Moorhouse will serve two individual 12-month sentences for each of his guilty pleas — the first being the making, printing, publishing, or possessing of child pornography, and the second involving the arrangements with a person to commit an offence with respect to a person under the age of 16 years.
He will undergo counselling while serving his prison sentence and will be registered to the national sex offender registry for 20 years.
— with files from Alex Cooke