Man jailed for posting sex assault video on social media

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This article was published 26/09/2017 (2917 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man found guilty of Snapchatting a friend sexually assaulting a minor has been sentenced to 10 months in jail.

Marcos Hurtado was convicted of voyeurism and producing and distributing child pornography after a trial, Judge Donovan Dvorak said in Brandon provincial court.

In March 2015, Hurtado was at a party when one of his friends took a 14-year-old girl up to a bedroom and had sex with her while Hurtado recorded a video and posted it on the popular social media platform Snapchat.

Crown attorney Brett Rach told the court Hurtado was aware of the victim’s age at the time of the offence but video recorded the sexual assault anyway, even though the victim was not old enough, or sober enough, to consent.

The video shows the man in bed, thrusting, Rach said. The child victim is only partially visible, with no nudity throughout the video.

Hurtado not only showed other people at the party the video, but placed that video on his Snapchat story — allowing anyone who follows his Snapchat to view it over a 24-hour period.

“The sentence needs to instil in Mr. Hurtado and others that surreptitiously recording people having sex — particularly when the sexual act itself was a crime — and placing that video on social media to embarrass, tarnish their reputation and demoralize them is not acceptable in our society,” Rach said.

“Someone was being abused here … he didn’t do anything to intervene or stop it — and admittedly he’s not legally obliged to do so — but he made the situation undoubtedly worse by video recording it and distributing it.”

A pre-sentencing report suggested Hurtado appeared to accept minimal responsibility for the offence, Rach added, which he seemed to “chalk up to a mistake he made while he was intoxicated.”

Defence lawyer Bob Harrison argued Hurtado did in fact realize the gravity of his mistake adding he regrets his actions greatly.

“He’s told me that he’s going to have to live with these actions for the rest of his life,” Harrison said.

The video itself was also not typical of most videos related to child pornography, Harrison said, as the victim wasn’t shown as she was completely covered by a blanket.

“Yes, it’s not explicit in that it shows specific body parts, but certainly it would be apparent to anyone what was going on in that room, and it was pretty apparent at the party what was going on. He chose to videotape that and — knowing she’s an underage girl — that’s child pornography,” Dvorak said.

“Voyeurism is serious enough, but then to subsequently upload it increases that seriousness greatly. What he was recording was a crime … he was recording an adult sexually abusing a child, and so the suggestion that it’s not serious because you don’t see the details of the body parts … misses the point of how serious this is.”

In addition to 10 months in jail, Hurtado also received two years supervised probation upon his release, in which he must complete sex offender programming and other ordered counselling, abstain from alcohol and is banned from using computers, cellphones or gaming systems with internet access.

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