By Patrick Burles - @PatrickBurles on Twitter

Lethbridge man admits to child porn and luring charges as a youth

Nov 25, 2016 | 12:39 PM

LETHBRIDGE – An 18-year old man entered pleas of making child pornography, luring a child and extortion this week in youth court.

In a media release from the Lethbridge Police Service, they say the man was charged on May 18, 2016, after a 14-year old girl reported in January that an unknown person on social media had befriended her in the summer of 2015.

The person pressured her into sending nude photos of herself, which she eventually did. After receiving the photos, the man told her to send more, saying that if she didn’t he would make the original ones public and send them to her family.

With assistance from the Integrated Child Exploitation Unit of ALERT (Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team), a suspect was identified. Police determined that the accused and victim were known to each other, however he had been communicating with her using false identities on various social media channels.

Police noted that the victim was fortunate, in that the photos she had sent were never backed up on a separate storage account, meaning police were able to contain them.

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The man – who can’t be named because he was under the age of 18 at the time of the offence – entered the guilty pleas in youth court Wednesday morning (Nov. 23), while the same charges were withdrawn in provincial court, where he was charged as an adult.

Special Prosecutor, Nadine Nesbitt, noted that there had been two sets of charges as the offences occurred before the accused turned 18, but he was arrested after his birthday when he became an adult.

A pre-sentence report has been ordered, which will examine the offenders personal history and willingness to change, with sentencing set for March of 2017.