Canada.com - Mar 26, 2012

A Queens County man who said he did "something sick" has been sentenced to six months in jail for possessing child pornography.

Steven John Croft, 39, of White Point is also banned from accessing the Internet other than for work purposes while on probation for 18 months.

Judge Gregory Lenehan of Liverpool provincial court told Croft that the ban extends to computers, iPads, iPods and cellphones.

And if Croft wants to leave Nova Scotia any time in the next 10 years, he must notify authorities before he leaves and then notify authorities in the place where he arrives so that they will know they have a known sex offender in their area "because that is what you are now known as," Lenehan said.

Special prosecutor Peter Dostal told the judge the RCMP’s Internet child exploitation unit began an online investigation in Sept. 22, 2010, of the alleged distribution of child pornography on public file-sharing networks.

An officer tracked down an IP address in the Bridgewater area, got a search warrant for a communications company and identified the address as belonging to Steven Croft of Hicks Road in White Point.

Police went to his home with a search warrant last July 26. Dostal said Croft told the officer he had used the programs LimeWire and FrostWire to download movies and music, and then told her he "did something wrong, something sick."

He told the officer he had downloaded "dirty pictures of young girls on his computer," Dostal said.

Croft said he’s also used MSN Messenger to get images.

He didn’t store the images and deleted them soon after he downloaded them, court was told.

Dostal said police found 155 images and 11 movies of child pornography involving girls as young as six, plus upward of 2,400 images of young girls clothed but in sexual poses.

Croft co-operated with police, offered to provide information that would help them track down other offenders and pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of child pornography, Dostal said.

Legal aid defence lawyer Bob Chipman said Croft told him he is sorry for what he did, that he will never do such a thing again and that he takes responsibility for his actions.

Croft is "ashamed and embarrassed by his actions" and has sought professional help, Chipman said.

Lenehan is required by law to look at some of the images rather than rely on the police officer’s conclusion that they are pornographic. After doing so, he told Croft, "every one of those little girls is a victim."

"Every one of those little girls has been victimized, and you downloading that assists the people who take the images and encourages them to take more images and encourages them to victimize more little girls, and this is why courts view people who possess these images as being almost as guilty as those who take the images."

Lenehan also banned Croft from being around anyone under age 18 while on probation, except for family members and those he meets incidentally through work or counselling, and ordered the forfeiture of the four computer systems police seized.