By Sue Montgomery, The Gazette - May 16, 2013

Canada Post driver Jean-Paul Lapierre has been sentenced to three years in jail for various child pornography charges as well as sexual touching.

“He will have to live in shame and disgrace and with the stigma, even though he’s the maker of his own misery,” Quebec Court Judge Robert Marchi said Thursday in sentencing the 55-year-old Lapierre.

Police investigators stopped counting the photos and videos of child pornography they found on Lapierre’s computer when they reached 109,000.

All had been painstakingly categorized into files bearing names such as “two girls,” “hardcore” and “young.”

Lapierre said all the images were already on computers he had picked out of the garbage over the years, and he just never got around to erasing them as he intended to. It was an explanation the judge said he didn’t believe.

Lapierre, who is on sick leave from his job, pleaded guilty last fall to three counts of distributing child pornography, one count each of producing and possessing child pornography, one count of sexual touching and one count of luring over the Internet.

Police caught him after receiving an anonymous tip from someone who had set up a fake Facebook page and, pretending to be a 13-year-old girl, began chatting with Lapierre. Unbeknownst to Lapierre, a police investigator took over the chats. Lapierre was arrested in November 2009.

The Crown had asked for a five-year sentence while the defence had asked for 15 months.

In sentencing Lapierre, the judge pointed out that it was interesting that Lapierre showed remorse and began therapy just in time for his sentencing hearing.