SQLFusion - Child porn lands Yellowknife man in jail

Child porn lands Yellowknife man in jail

Yahoo News Canada

CBC.ca

Mon Nov 2, 9:01 PM

A former Yellowknife lawyer and convicted sex offender has been sentenced to one year in jail and three years' probation for possessing child pornography.

Charles McGee was also sentenced Monday for violating the terms of a prior sentence on a conviction of indecent assault on a minor.

McGee pleaded guilty to both charges earlier this year.

McGee was convicted in 2004 and 2006 of indecent assault involving young girls, resulting from incidents that took place in the 1970s and '80s.

He was sentenced to nine months in jail and one year of probation on the 2006 conviction, and house arrest for the 2004 conviction.

But an RCMP investigation showed that McGee had viewed child pornography on his home computer while serving the house arrest sentence.

On Monday, prosecutors noted that McGee had hundreds of links to child pornography websites on his computer, along with thousands of images and a number of erotic stories about adults having sex with children.

"There was approximately 74,000 images that were kept on the computer or accessed by one of the computers at one point in time," prosecutor Janice Walsh said outside court Monday afternoon.

"Most of those images had been deleted, but there were actual pictures on Mr. McGee's laptop that were still accessible. In fact, one that had been a [desktop] wallpaper item."

When McGee's latest jail sentence ends, his probation will be subject to a number of conditions, such as a ban on using computers that are connected to the internet.

He will also be barred from attending public parks and other places where children under the age of 16 would likely be present.

The Crown asked for a 12-month to 18-month jail sentence during Monday's sentencing hearing, at which McGee's wife sat behind him in the courtroom.

Walsh said McGee underwent a forensic risk assessment that determined his risk to reoffend.

"There were two types of things that they were looking for: the recidivism rate or risk of him to reoffend with a physical victim which they found to be low, and the risk for him to reoffend by accessing child pornography through the internet, which they found to be moderate," she said.

"So he fell in a low to moderate risk to reoffend."

The defence argued that McGee was open and honest with investigators and is dealing with an alcohol addiction and pedophilia, and should thus be granted a more lenient sentence and access to programs and support for those issues.

The maximum sentence for possessing child pornography is five years.

Diocesan webmaster pleads guilty to child porn charges, was hired despite assault convictions

Catholic Culture

19 June 2009

The former webmaster of the northern Canadian Diocese of Mackenzie-Ft. Smith has pled guilty to internet child-pornography charges. Charles McGee-- who was also an attorney-- had been convicted twice for sexually assaulting young girls. “When he was hired with us a year and a half ago, it was felt that it was a second-chance opportunity in a totally safe setting in terms of no contact with minors,” said Bishop Murray Chatlain, who apologized last month for the systemic abuse of Native American children in residential schools. “He was working in our archives and our chancery.”

Yellowknife man convicted on child porn charges was a Catholic church webmaster

CBC News

Last Updated: Thursday, June 18, 2009 | 1:03 PM CT

A former Yellowknife lawyer who recently pleaded guilty to child pornography charges was listed as the N.W.T.'s Catholic diocese website manager as recently as Wednesday, when the diocese took the old website offline.

Charles McGee, who has two previous convictions on sexual assault charges, pleaded guilty last week to possessing internet child pornography. He will be sentenced in September.

Before he was charged in October 2008, McGee had been on day parole and was working in the administration of the Roman Catholic Diocese of the Mackenzie.

McGee was even listed as the "webmaster" of the diocese's homepage, rcdiocese.yk.com, which had been "under construction" since Dec. 27, 2007.

"When he was hired with us a year and a half ago, it was felt that it was a second-chance opportunity in a totally safe setting in terms of no contact with minors," Bishop Murray Chatlain told CBC News.

"And now we have a new website, but that [other] one, unfortunately, is still up. We'll have to remove that as soon as we can." A Google search for rcdiocese.yk.com Thursday shows the webpage is no longer there. But a cache of the page, with McGee's name on it, can still be accessed from the search engine results. McGee recently served a nine-month sentence for indecently assaulting a young girl more than 25 years ago. Before that, he completed house arrest after he was convicted of fondling young girls 30 years ago.

"It's unfortunate in terms of the association right now. I think the main thing is that when Charles worked for us, the first priority was that he had no contact with minors at all," Chatlain said of McGee.

"He was working in our archives and our chancery. And as soon as the new issues surfaced, he was on leave of absence and then resigned."

Still, Chatlain conceded the optics surrounding the online oversight are bad, especially since he formally apologized last month for abuses suffered by Dene who attended native residential schools.