A 63-year-old Prince George man was sentenced on Thursday to spend his weekends in jail for possession of child pornography.
James Harold Kidd will serve a total of 90 days in jail, followed by a three year probation for the possession of three or four videos showing the sexual assault of naked, prepubescent girls.
Kidd will stay in Prince George Regional Correctional Centre each weekend starting Friday at 5 p.m. until Sunday at 5 p.m. until the sentence is up. The judge said Kidd's guilty plea from November 2015 was a key factor in his acceptance of the joint submission for the mandatory minimum sentence, despite the "very serious circumstances" of Kidd's crime.
Defence counsel Keith Aartsen pointed to key passages in Kidd's psychological report, pre-sentencing report and supporting letters that described him as a "polite and amiable man" who has "quite a bit of remorse" for his actions.
"It is uncommon for an internet offender to become a hands-on offender," read Aartsen from the psychological report, adding the author believed Kidd "does not pose a danger to community outside of his secretive internet use. No member of the public is at risk."
Kidd, who has no criminal record, came to the attention of an RCMP investigator who connected Kidd's IP address to 219 files that had been flagged as suspected child pornography and were downloaded between January 2014 and February 2015.
In March 2015, B.C.'s Internet Child Exploitation unit came to Prince George and knocked on Kidd's door, search warrant in hand. Police seized his computer, hard drives and interviewed him after his arrest.
"He admitted to using the file sharing program that was associated to downloading child pornography," said Crown prosecutor Anne Baines, and also admitted "he looks at porn, but how do you tell the difference between 17-year-old and an 18-year-old?
"He doesn't know what he's downloading until it's downloaded. If it's child pornography, he deletes it."
Later Aartsen said Kidd's explanation is not an excuse.
"He agrees totally that he did these things, that he did download child pornography, but that as a result of that downloading he had little interest in pursuing that sort of situation."
Last year police asked the father of three adult children if his wife knew he had child porn.
"His response was, 'I guess she knows now,'" said Baines, adding of 48 files found on the computer, three or four were of child pornography.
In addition, he had a one- to two-hour-long collage with several children pornography images.
Baines gave disturbing descriptions of two videos that showed naked girls, between the ages of three and six, being sexually assaulted by a man.
Throughout Thursday's proceedings, Kidd held his hands clasped in his lap and stared forward or down, blinking occasionally.
He stood when the judge read the sentence, and spoke only to say he had nothing to add.
Kidd's oldest son has two young girls and the terms of his probation leave it up to the parents to decide whether he will see his grandchildren.
The conditions of his sentence state he can't be in the presence of anyone under 16 without another adult who knows about his crime.
Kidd was ordered to forfeit the computer and hard drive in question and is forbidden to access the internet or have internet in his home
Kidd was also ordered to provide a DNA sample.
