Mother testifies on second day of child-luring trial

A woman testified in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench that she didn’t think anything of her then 13-year-old daughter’s relationship with a 39-year-old man in 2023, believing they were “just friends.”

The mother testified during a trial for a man, 41, charged with two child-luring offences, along with distributing sexually explicit material to a person under 16, possessing child pornography, making child pornography and inviting a person under 16 to sexually touch him.

The Sun cannot name the complainant due to a publication ban on information that could identify her. To ensure she is not identified and that the ban is not breached, the Sun has chosen not to name the accused.

The girl’s mother said prior to 2023, she knew the accused for about six or seven years. She said they had worked together at one point.

She said she ran into him around town, and around the fall of 2022, he started coming over to her house to hang out with her and her kids, but she didn’t see him very often. She testified she had told him in conversation that her daughter was 13 years old.

“How did things go in terms of him coming over and spending time with you or other people in your family?” Crown attorney Rich Lonstrup asked.

“Everything was fine,” she said.

The man is accused of sending sexual messages expressing his desire to have sexual intercourse with the complainant and sending her several photos of his penis.

At the time of the allegations, the mother said the accused didn’t come inside the house as much as he used to and instead would pull up in front of the house in his truck. She and the kids would go outside and “socialize” with him there, she said.

She testified that she started to notice her daughter and the accused “spending a lot more time together.”

“I didn’t think anything of it,” she said. “I thought they were just friends.”

When asked to highlight some of the instances where her daughter and the accused spent time together, she said she knew she babysat for him roughly six times.

In May of 2023, she came across the messages exchanged between her daughter and what appeared to be the accused.

“I went through the text messages and figured out what was going on,” she said. “I came across a picture of my daughter.”

Lonstrup asked what the picture contained. She wiped her eyes as she said the photo was of her daughter in her bra and underwear.

“I panicked. I thought something was going on, and still to this day I’m not sure if more happened.”

She said she never allowed her children to have their own phones, so they used hers to communicate and log into their social media accounts.

She testified that she didn’t talk to her daughter about the photos and went straight to the police.

Lonstrup asked if she ever sexually messaged the accused, sent him “flirty” messages, or sexual or intimate pictures. She said no.

“Did you ever have a conversation with him pretending to be (the complainant) in any way?” he asked.

She said she didn’t.

In cross-examination, defence lawyer Bob Harrison asked how she knew her daughter babysat for the accused. She said her daughter would tell her.

He asked if her children were going to school at the time. She said her oldest son did, but her other two children didn’t. When he asked why, she said she would always have to fight with them to go, and they would refuse.

“You were drinking a lot of alcohol, using drugs, crystal meth during this time period?” Harrison said.

She said she wasn’t doing drugs but was drinking roughly four days a week. When asked how much she usually drank, she said she would have around six beers a night but no hard alcohol.

Harrison suggested that she and the accused had a conversation during which he said the children needed a mother and “not somebody using drugs.”

She said she did not recall such a conversation.

Harrison asked if either she or her son pressured the complainant to go to the police.

When she said no, Harrison asked why.

“Because it was up to her,” she said.

“Even though she was 13?” he asked.

She said yes.

Manitoba RCMP Const. Sheldon Verspeek and Const. Kirandeep Hira also took the stand.

Verspeek said he is a digital forensic examiner, and his role in this matter was to extract the data from the accused’s phone, unlock the phone and photograph apps and other materials that could be relevant in the investigation before passing it on to Hira.

Hira was in the Internet Child Exploitation unit in 2023, and she said her job was to analyze the data that was extracted.

She testified that there were 18 unique images on the phone that met the definition of child sexual abuse material.

“(The) material located on the device was of females between the ages of one and 15 years old. The child sexual abuse and exploitation materials illustrated erotic posing and both penetrative and non-penetrative sexual activity with adults,” she said.

She said there were also 11 “selfies” of teenage girls on the phone.

She testified that his search and web history was also analyzed, which contained numerous searches for “teen porn” and questions regarding how to find arrest warrants.

Based on chats between the accused and his ex-girlfriend, Hira said it appeared he was “actively evading arrest” and asking her to speak to the complainant to gain information on what had been reported.

Hira is expected to return for cross-examination tomorrow.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com