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Brandon Sun - ONLINE EDITION

Boy rescued during massive child-porn probe

Manitobans among 21 arrested

By: Staff Writer

Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012 at 8:41 AM

POLICE say a boy in Saskatchewan was rescued from years of abuse during a police investigation that targeted online child predators across the Prairies.

The RCMP's Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children announced Wednesday 21 people have been arrested and 16 of them -- including two Manitobans -- charged so far as part of Operation Snapshot. Ten of those charged are in Saskatchewan and four are in Alberta.

The charges include invitation to sexual touching, Internet luring, indecent exposure and accessing and distributing child pornography.

Det.-Sgt. Darren Parisien, who led the operation, said hundreds of thousands of images were found on more than 100 computers or hard drives and 1,000 disks.

"The vast majority involve children under the age of 12," Parisien said at a news conference in Regina.

"But more and more increasingly, we're dealing with images of infants, toddlers... children who can't even speak. That's becoming a disturbing trend that we're seeing in a lot of cases and certainly that was present in a number of the investigations involved with this project."

Operation Snapshot involved 30 multi-agency police investigations in 15 different communities in Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

"The investigation in Manitoba is still continuing," said RCMP Sgt. Line Karpish.

The Manitoba suspects charged so far include Kevin John Schmidt, 46, of Winnipeg, who has been accused of using the Internet to lure teenaged youth for sex.

A search was conducted at Schmidt's residence in August, where two computers and related items were seized.

He will appear in provincial court on Oct. 29, charged with three counts of luring to commit sexual interference.

Another Manitoba suspect is Garry Welcome Morris, 56. When a home in The Pas was raided in June, he was arrested at the scene and charged with several offences, including possessing child pornography.

In the case of the boy in Saskatoon, police said he was abused by a family member's roommate. The abuse started five years ago, when the boy was about eight or nine years old and ended when police executed a search warrant last June. A man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the boy, has already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Parisien would not specifically say how the alleged sexual predators were found for fear of driving them to another technology or location. He did say officers went to places such as file-sharing networks where pornography was traded. They also posed as children or other predators.

Parisien cautioned many of the images did not appear to come from overseas.

"Most of the images that we're seeing now are homegrown," he said.

-- The Canadian Press, with file from staff