Student given one year in jail for child porn

Warning: Story contains material which may be disturbing to some readers.

At a sentencing hearing in Saskatoon last week, Judge Barry Singer had to watch samples of five “shocking and horrible” videos from University of Saskatchewan law student Eran Michael Pinsky’s massive child pornography collection.

It was clearly an unpleasant experience for the provincial court judge.

The clips he saw were not even the most depraved among the nearly 70,000 images and videos of child abuse city police investigators found on two USB drives seized from Pinsky’s backpack as he attempted to board a flight to visit his parents in Vancouver on May 31, Singer noted Monday before imposing a one-year jail term on the 27-year-old.

An aggravating factor in his case is the fact that Pinsky was already awaiting a Queen’s Bench trial on previous child-porn-related charges when he acquired the collection, which may be one of the largest ever recovered by police in Canada, the judge said.

Singer gave Pinsky credit of one month against his sentence for the time he has spent in custody since his arrest, leaving him with 11 months to serve in a provincial jail.

He also imposed three years of probation – the maximum allowed under law – to follow Pinsky’s release, with conditions that he abstain from all pornography, take sex offender treatment, not have access to the Internet except as required for employment, and submit to police searches without a warrant. His name and address will also be part of the national sex offender registry for 10 years.

In addition to the possession charge, Pinsky pleaded guilty to breaching a no-pornography clause in the bail conditions he promised to follow in 2009, after he was arrested in connection with a nationwide child porn investigation known as Project Salvo.

He is expected to stand trial later this year on the 2009 charges of possessing child porn and making it available to others online.

Pinsky attempted to minimize the extreme nature of the material in his 2011 collection when he spoke to the probation officer who prepared his pre-sentence report, but in reality it included photos and videos of sexual violence, including bondage and bestiality by adult men against thousands of girls as young as infancy, Singer noted.

His decision to acquire such a cache – which he downloaded for free during the course of a few months, then carefully sorted and organized – while already facing criminal charges related to the same activity shows that Pinsky was either willing to take a significant risk for the sake of his sexual gratification or unable to control his impulses, the judge remarked.

During his sentencing hearing last week, defence lawyer Brian Pfefferle asked Singer to impose a lighter jail term of 30 to 90 days, arguing that the public stigma attached to his conviction should be taken into account.

Pfefferle said Pinsky will be unable to pursue a legal career and has been socially ostracized by classmates and others because of the charges.

“It is a stigma crime because the public finds the offence morally repugnant,” Singer said Monday. “(Ostracism) is an expected consequence of his conduct.”

lcoolican@thestarphoenix.com