Crown completes cross-examination of southern Alberta man in sexual assault trial

A southern Alberta man on trial for sex offences against underage girls was back on the stand in a Lethbridge courtroom on Wednesday.

Trevor Pritchard spent about two hours on the witness stand in Court of Queen’s Bench as the Crown completed its cross-examination.

The 35-year-old was the final witness to testify before the defence closed its case.

The Crown centred much of its questioning around Facebook messaging records from two accounts: one belonging to Pritchard and another the crown believes was used by Pritchard as an alias when contacting his alleged victims.

Some of the messages presented contained sexually explicit language and on some occasions nude photos were sent by the underage victims.

The crown alleges that on one occasion an explicit photo was sent by an underage girl to the alias account, then later sent to another user from a different account with the username Trevor Pritchard.

Court then heard that same photo was found during a forensic examination of a laptop computer that belonged to the accused.

Pritchard denied having the alias Facebook account, sending the explicit messages, receiving the photos and knowing any of the alleged victims.

After the completion of testimony from Pritchard on Wednesday, the defence and Crown presented their closing arguments.

The defence called the evidence circumstantial and said there was no proof that Pritchard was the only person who could have used the Facebook accounts in question.

The Crown argued that Pritchard’s denial is “self serving” and is at odds with the forensic evidence presented at trial.

Trevor Pritchard began testifying in his own defence Tuesday. He’s facing charges of sexual assault, luring and child pornography.