Warning: This story contains graphic content.
A North Saanich man who sat at his computer and directed a Chinese father to sexually assault his young son was sentenced Thursday to five years in a federal penitentiary.
In what is believed to be Canada’s first case of cyber sex tourism, Jean-Pierre François Lévesque, 62, pleaded guilty June 10 to possession of child pornography for the purpose of trafficking, and counselling to commit a sexual assault on a person under the age of 16.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Keith Bracken called the facts of the case disturbing: “I will say that it is beyond understatement that the police report contains perverted and disgusting material.”
Bracken accepted a joint submission by Crown and defence and imposed a global sentence of five years. He ordered Lévesque to provide a DNA sample and imposed a lifetime firearms ban.
Lévesque, who wore a peacekeeping blazer at his earlier sentencing hearing, appeared in court wearing a green sweatshirt. He was handcuffed and led away by a sheriff.
Lévesque came to the attention of police in October 2010. During their investigation, police found child pornography files and video communication between Lévesque and a man in China, the father of a young boy who appeared to be four to six years old.
Lévesque and the father had a series of video chats beginning in February 2009 that continued until January 2011. In September 2009, Lévesque visited the father and son during a trip to Shanghai. Photographs found on his computer show Lévesque holding the young, smiling boy on his lap and with his arm around the boy at an amusement park.
In late 2010, Lévesque and the father used Skype to see each other and to chat while Lévesque watched and directed the sex acts the father performed on his son.
During the sexually explicit chats, Lévesque told the father what to do and where to put the camera. There is discussion between the two men about what Lévesque will do to the boy on a future trip to China in August 2011.
On Dec. 21, 2010, Lévesque promised another child-porn trader he would videotape sexual assaults of an eight-year-old boy, presumably the son, and a one-year-old child.
At the sentencing hearing, Det. Sgt. Darren Parisien, an expert in online child exploitation who works for the Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in Ottawa, testified that he was using the file-trading system Gigatribe to covertly look for people trading child porn on the Internet.
He began chatting with Lévesque. They traded passwords, and Parisien immediately downloaded 11 child pornography videos from Lévesque’s folder.
“All 11 files clearly fit the definition of child pornography,” Parisien testified. “They included violent sex assaults on a child, toddler, infants and oral, vaginal and anal sex. The videos show very young children being abused by adult men, also children under the age of one.”
Parisien sent a report to the B.C. Integrated Child Exploitation Unit, which acted with Sidney RCMP to arrest Lévesque in January 2011.
Const. Mark Southby, a digital forensic expert, provided a detailed summary of the chats, videos and photographs he found on Lévesque's computer.
“All of it was disturbing, some of it very disturbing,” Bracken said. One of the clips was accompanied by the sound of an infant crying, he said.
There was no evidence Lévesque ever sexually assaulted the boy, but it’s plain from the material that Lévesque derived sexual pleasure from observing the assaults, Bracken said.
Lévesque had no prior record, co-operated with police, entered a guilty plea and had been a member of the Canadian Forces.
“It is my hope that while you are in custody that some effort be made to provide counselling and treatment for the difficulties that led you to commit these offences,” Bracken said.
Outside court, Crown prosecutor Dan Scanlan said that at the time of Lévesque’s arrest the RCMP notified Chinese authorities that a child was at risk.
“The matter was dealt with, but they gave no details,” Scanlan said.
ldickson@timescolonist.com
