57-year-old once drove bus for company that transported handicapped children
Ottawa Citizen
27 July 2011
By Andrew Seymour
A bisexual pedophile who worked for a bus and van company that transports handicapped children is himself a victim of child pornography, a judge said Tuesday, before sentencing the man to two years less a day in jail.
Gilles Simard, 57, may never have found himself in front of a court as a diagnosed pedophile if he hadn’t fallen into the “trap” of online child pornography, said Ontario Court Justice Robert Fournier.
Fournier also declined to give Simard the prison sentence the Crown was seeking, concluding that Simard wouldn’t be “well-received” there because of the child sex aspect of his conviction.
Simard had a vast collection that included 24,640 videos and 5,532 pictures that depicted children as young as infants being graphically sexually assaulted.
Fournier found the size of Simard’s collection, the nature of the images and the seriousness of the crime aggravating, but felt a prison sentence was unnecessary. The hostile prison atmosphere wouldn’t help Simard’s rehabilitation, he said.
“If he is a damaged man now, that is nothing to the damaged man he would be when he came out of that particular scenario,” said Fournier, noting Simard was a low risk to reoffend. “It will dilapidate him, it will destroy him, if anything.”
Fournier instead recommended Simard be sent to the St. Lawrence Valley Correctional and Treatment Centre, a provincial jail where he can receive specialized treatment.
Simard claimed he had inadvertently stumbled upon the videos and then became “nosy” and downloaded more after developing an interest in it.
He later told police he had tried to delete the material but it just kept coming back – an explanation Fournier said he found difficult, if not impossible, to accept.
“He is exposed to the material and succumbs to it,” said Fournier.
“He has fallen deep into that trap and here he is.”
Simard was arrested on Aug. 26 after sharing some of his files online.
At the time, he worked as a dispatcher with Blondeau Transportation. Simard had been with the company for 25 years.
A pre-sentence report indicated he had once worked as a bus driver, although he was not working in that capacity at the time of his arrest.
At the time of his arrest, Simard’s girlfriend told police she had seen “pictures” before and had given Simard “sh-” for it. When asked what kind of pictures she had seen, she replied “sick stuff … kids.”
Simard shook his head as prosecutor Fara Rupert described how a psychiatrist found he had an attraction to young girls and boys. Simard told the doctor he knew what he was doing was wrong because he had once worked with handicapped children, Rupert said.
Simard’s lawyer, James Harbic, said his client was “basically illiterate” and it took some time for him to “intellectually comprehend” why what he did was wrong.
In addition to jail time, Simard was placed on two years probation and ordered to stay away from parks, pools, playgrounds or other places children may be.
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Judge calls pedophile caught with kiddie porn ‘victim’
Ottawa Sun
First posted: | Updated:
By Scott Taylor
An Ottawa judge described a pedophile guilty of collecting more than 24,000 videos and 5,000 pictures of infants, children and teens as a “victim” while sentencing him Tuesday to two years less a day in jail.
Gilles Simard, 57, will serve two concurrent sentences for pleading guilty to possession and distribution of kiddie porn. Two years of probation and numerous strict conditions apply upon his release.
Simard was a longtime dispatcher for Blondeau Transportation, a bus company that is involved with the transportation of children on school buses when undercover Ottawa police came across his IP address as one that was sharing child pornography files with others.
In July 2010, a five-minute video that showed a 13-year-old boy involved in several sex acts with a 15-year-old girl was downloaded from Simard’s IP address.
A month later, that same IP address prompted the undercover cop to download two more videos.
Then last April police executed a search warrant at an address on St. Joseph Blvd. in Orleans. Simard arrived home in a Blondeau van at that time and was arrested.
He later pleaded guilty to both charges and was assessed at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, where he was deemed to be a bisexual, non-exclusive pedophile attracted to both boys and girls.
In his sentencing, Judge Robert Fournier discounted Simard’s contention that he had tried to delete the videos only to have them pop back into his computer every time.
But he took pity on the unkempt, balding man, a self-described slow learner, who told police he didn’t know that just watching videos and looking at pictures was against the law.
Fournier took that explanation along with the fact Simard was deemed a low risk to reoffend into account during sentencing. He also said that if he sent Simard to a penitentiary, that he would “not be well received there” by inmates who target those who hurt and exploit children.
“When word gets out . . . you’re not treated there very well,” the judge said. “If he is a damaged man now, that is nothing compared to how damaged he would be when he comes out. I can’t ignore that.”
Fournier then said that the Internet is a trap that Simard fell into and that had there been no online child porn, Simard probably wouldn’t be standing before him.
“To a certain degree, Mr. Simard is a victim.
Simard will serve his time at St. Lawrence Valley Correctional and Treatment Centre.