A B.C. man convicted on child pornography charges has been allowed to serve his sentence in the community, in part because of the “relatively modest” size of his collection, a judge has ruled.

“Although there is no strict mathematical relationship between the size of the collection and the length (or indeed type) of sentence, the size of a collection has often been held to be an aggravating factor,” Tam wrote.

Despite pleading guilty to the charges, Keenan maintained that he is not sexually attracted to children, and had only stumbled upon the child pornography in 2017 while “searching for other images such as sunsets and beaches,” according to the decision.

Keenan said was appalled by what he found, and decided to start a Tumblr blog to lure out paedophiles so he could report them to the site’s moderators in a kind of “undercover sting.”

The judge was not convinced.

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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    3 days ago

    Despite pleading guilty to the charges, Keenan maintained that he is not sexually attracted to children, and had only stumbled upon the child pornography in 2017 while “searching for other images such as sunsets and beaches,” according to the decision.

    He stumbled upon them in 2017 while searching for other innocuous images and just decided to save them and not delete them for 8 years. Seems like completely normal, well-adjusted behavior.

    • vaguerant@fedia.io
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      3 days ago

      Actually reading the link, he was arrested in 2018. It’s not very exculpatory to say “His CSAM collection wasn’t eight years old, it was only one year old,” but it’s true I guess.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        This may in fact not be completely outside of the realm of possibility for someone who has no idea how to actually operate his computer, which is most people. The notion that things can be deleted, not to mention when they should be deleted or when they should not be deleted, and the fact that on most modern systems they aren’t actually deleted when you hit “delete” and instead go to some manner of purgatory elsewhere on your drive where they’re still accessible in full (recycle bin/trash) regularly eludes the majority of computer users.

        The problem is, the defendant’s excuse could be explained by him being a moron from multiple avenues, so we’ll never know if he’s inept (as in can’t delete files) or inept (as in so stupid he things everyone else is as stupid as he is in order to believe his dumb excuse).

        • zeppo@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          I know this dude who started a really half-ass “predator finder” website. It’s kinda suspicious. Oh, and then he started dating a 17 year old when he was 23.

        • vaguerant@fedia.io
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          2 days ago

          I did read it. The Tumblr blog is what was reported to police, leading to his arrest in 2018, roughly a year after the offending began. The original commenter was under the mistaken impression that his offenses went undetected until 2025, or roughly eight years. I corrected a misunderstanding about years.