SASKATOON – A Saskatoon man will spend two more years in prison for possessing, distributing and producing child pornography after being sentenced Friday for the second time in less than three years on similar charges.
Justin Gryba, 27, was initially arrested in November 2011 when police found roughly 3,000 child porn images in his possession. He was convicted in January 2013, however in September 2014, he was arrested again while on parole, after police cracked encrypted hard drives they had seized during the initial arrest. He’s been in custody on remand ever since.
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On the hard drives were nearly 10,000 more child porn images, as well as videos Gryba secretly made of boys he was paired with as part of a youth program he was volunteering with in Saskatoon. The videos showed the boys undressing in a pool change room and at his home.
“I think the court did an excellent job of balancing all of the factors that were present in this case and there were a lot,” said Crown prosecutor Michael Segu, outside of court after the sentencing.
Chief Justice Martel Popescul said words cannot express the vile nature of the additional child porn images found on the hard drives. He called the content “repugnant, disturbing and reprehensible,” however he noted that the videos Gryba produced himself were on the lower scale of child porn and amounted to voyeurism.
Gryba also had no previous criminal record, is a young man and is “truly sorry for what he’s done,” according to Popescul. He added that he’s been assessed at a low risk to re-offend and has taken the steps to rehabilitate since his arrest.
The Crown had called for a two-and-a-half year additional sentence, while the defence argued that Gryba be sentenced to time served and be set free. Popescul called most of the Crown’s sentencing submissions “appropriate” in length, but decreased the sentence slightly after taking at look at its entirety. The time spend in prison on remand was also considered in the sentence.
While defence lawyer Morris Bodnar said “it’s a long sentence for a first offender,” he added that the exact length was “crucial.” Because the sentence was less than two years, it allows Gryba to serve the time at the provincial correctional centre in Saskatoon, where he can keep seeing his psychologist.
“It’s a mental illness that has to be overcome,” said Bodnar.
“It’s not something that people want to do and if you can overcome that mental illness, you don’t do it again.”