HALIFAX — Police forces across Atlantic Canada have rescued two children and arrested 22 people in a major child exploitation bust in Atlantic Canada.
At a press conference in Halifax on Wednesday morning, police said one of the children rescued is from Nova Scotia and the other Dover, N.L. RCMP wouldn’t offer further details about their ages or the locations where the children were living.
Police seized 43 computers and 72 external hard drives that contained millions of images, in an investigation called Operation Snapshot II, which targeted child predators in the four Atlantic provinces.
The men face a total of 64 charges including accessing, possessing, making and making available child pornography, voyeurism and unsafe storage of a firearm.
One of the suspects is a registered sex offender.
Four of the men are from New Brunswick, nine are from Newfoundland and Labrador, eight are from Nova Scotia and one is from P.E.I. They range from 22-years-old to 63.
One of the men who was arrested last week, Thomas Anthony Eisan, worked as a live-in nanny and child care worker in Halifax.
“Most of the images we encounter are not individuals that are 16, 17, 18 years old. They’re typically kids aged from diapers up to 5 to 10 years of age and the images, the movies can be very graphic, they’re images of kids in diapers being abused, 3 year olds being abused,” said Toronto Police Detective Chris Purchase an expert with the Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
Purchase co-coordinated the operation, which included municipal police and RCMP, following up on a similar operation which targeted offenders in the Prairies, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories last October.
Charges listed below:
PEI
Steven Bowley, 25: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography
Nova Scotia
Leamund Knickle, 46: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, unsafe storage of a firearm
Robert MacKinnon, 24: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, unsafe storage of a firearm
Steve Agnew, 38: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography
Vernon Rae Sullivan, 61: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Investigation ongoing, charges pending: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Christopher Bayers, 46, HRM: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Thomas Anthony Eisan, 26, HRM: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography, unsafe storage of a firearm
John Anthony Campbell, 60, HRM: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Newfoundland and Labrador
Investigation ongoing, charges pending, 31: possession of child pornography
Robert David Butler, 22: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Investigation ongoing, charges pending, 26: possession of child pornography, accessing child pornography
Decian Chaisson, 43: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Theodore Alexander Lush, 25: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Richard David Moore, 46: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Clyde Button, 55: making child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography, eight counts of voyeurism, possession of child pornography
Investigation ongoing, charges pending: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
Kyle Clarke, 24: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography, accessing child pornography
New Brunswick
Investigation ongoing, charges pending: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography
Frederic Price, 52: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography
Investigation ongoing, charges pending: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography
Donald J. Martin, 48: possession of child pornography, making available child pornography
-with files from Natasha Pace
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