Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Child Abuse Material

Should there be mandatory minimum sentences for possession of child sexual abuse material?

I write crime thrillers that are based on true crime. I do an incredible amount of research and use true criminal statistics in my books. When I researched the Operation Duology: Wormwood and the Reckoning, I dug deep into the dark world of pedophiles.

One of the challenges I ran into is that these networks have a lot of powerful people. You know the big names that are in the media now, and they are only the tip of the Iceberg.

This week, Quebec Police Arrested 22 Men Following Child Sexual Exploitation Investigation. Police said the men range in age from 18 to 70 years old. These arrests come about eight months after the Quebec police were involved in a similar operation that resulted in 100 people across Canada being charged in a nationwide operation targeting child exploitation.

This operation involved 63 police services and more than 300 charges. There were dozens of child victims, according to the RCMP. The details of these cases before the Supreme Court are appalling.

In a separate investigation, two men were caught with hundreds of images and videos of children as young as three years old. One had 317 images, almost all of them of girls between three and six years old.

The other had hundreds of videos of children between five and ten years old. I can’t even go into the details of their cases because they are dehumanizing and evil.

But instead of giving them the appropriate sentencing. The Canadian Supreme Court struck down mandatory minimum sentences for possession of child sexual abuse material, weakening protections for children.

This is a disgusting failure of the justice system. Isn’t justice supposed to protect the most vulnerable?

Our government could have used the notwithstanding clause to reintroduce mandatory minimum sentences for possession of child sexual abuse material and ensure the rights of innocent children are placed above the rights of child sexual abusers.

But they didn’t.

A recent Statistics Canada report said there were about 262 incidents of child exploitation per 100,000 children in 2023. It said that online child pornography accounted for 87 percent of online child exploitation incidents that year.

The report noted that out of all child sexual exploitation incidents reported by police between 2014 and 2021, 92 percent did not result in a completed court case by 2023. It notes that most incidents did not make it past the police clearance stage, with 77 percent of incidents reported to police not solved.

Statistics Canada said that once the matter is in court, 72 percent of cases result in a guilty decision.

If we can’t prosecute and jail pedophiles, what’s next?

 I’ll tell you where this is going.  The next step will be lowering the age of consent and changing the legal term of pedophile to minor-attracted person.

Ask yourself, why haven’t we seen the Epstein List?

Because of leverage – leverage over powerful people is more important than the safety of our children to federal politicians.