A consumer of child pornography from the Laurentians who had more than a million and a half explicit videos and images of children in his home was sentenced to four years in prison.
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“[C]every file, every child we see, is a victim […] who risks having problems all his life because of what was done by adults,” insisted Judge Sylvain Lépine, Tuesday morning, at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse.
He endorsed a joint suggestion from the Crown and the defense regarding the sentence to be imposed on Patrick Renaud, who will be placed on the sex offender register for the next 20 years.
Moving with the help of a cane, Renaud appeared in court with bags full of personal belongings, ready for his stay in prison.
Patrick Renaud, in the corridors of the Saint-Jérôme courthouse, Tuesday, December 12.
PHOTO MARTIN ALARIE / JOURNAL DE MONTRÉAL
The man who will celebrate his 51st birthday on Christmas Eve behind bars had pleaded guilty to three counts of distribution, possession and access to child pornography.
By committing these offenses, “we are just encouraging” the crimes suffered by children, added Judge Lépine.
“Huge”
The offender was identified by the authorities using a database which makes it possible to target recently active users and candidates for downloading child pornography material.
According to a report, Renaud offered between November 3 and 20, 2019 nearly 14,700 files in this area on sharing platforms, according to an agreed statement of facts in this case.
Then, in January 2020, a search warrant allowed police to raid Renaud’s residence on Chemin d’Oka, in Deux-Montagnes.
The criminal had a total of more than 1,526,000 images and videos with young people aged between 2 and 14, analysis of the computer hardware revealed.
A “huge” find, agreed Judge Lépine.
Automated system
Among the factors aggravating Renaud’s case, we note in particular that the computer scientist had “automated software for his research and storage”, indicated Estée Pouliot-Voukirakis, Crown prosecutor.
During the interrogation which followed his arrest, Patrick Renaud also revealed that he had been viewing such content since the early 2000s.
The fifty-year-old, who admitted to having a fantasy for young girls, believed that “the children he [voit] in the photos look happy doing this,” according to the statement of facts.
According to a psychosexual report cited in court Tuesday by the accused’s lawyer, Me Michael Kevin Oates, Renaud has already started a therapeutic journey and has expressed his desire to work on the management of deviant sexual preferences.