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Woman subject of sentencing hearing for child pornography

A 37-year-old Fort St. James woman is facing sentencing for making child pornography involving her son and daughter and then sending the images and videos to a man she met through an internet dating site.
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A 37-year-old Fort St. James woman is facing sentencing for making child pornography involving her son and daughter and then sending the images and videos to a man she met through an internet dating site.
The incidents occurred about a half-dozen times over a two- to three-month period beginning in early November 2010, the court was told during a sentencing hearing Wednesday at the Prince George courthouse.
She agreed to the man's requests through a combination of fear – he had threatened to harm the children – and a desire to maintain the relationship. At the time, she had been drinking and consuming drugs and was suffering from low self-esteem as the result of a failed marriage.
By January 2011, she broke off the relationship and struck up a new one with another man in Fort St. James.
The law caught up with her in October 2013 when she was arrested, roughly five months after a police investigation into allegations that images of child pornography were being exchanged through a website that led to the arrest of the man in Calgary.
He was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison.
The children, who were 10 and 12 years old at the time of the incidents, are now in the care of relatives on her ex-husband's side of the family and are not ready to have contact with their mother, the court was told.
Crown counsel is seeking 2 1/2 years in a federal penitentiary noting sexual offender treatment is not available in provincial jails.
Defence counsel argues a provincial time of less than two years followed by three years probation is appropriate, noting she can participate in sexual offender treatment in the community once out on parole.
Her name cannot be published under a court-ordered publication ban against information that would identify the victims.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church will issue her decision at a later date.