By Lara Fominoff @LaraFominoff on Twitter

Former Teacher on Piikani First Nation sentenced to 30 months in jail

Jan 21, 2019 | 4:34 PM

LETHBRIDGE – A former fourth grade teacher who worked at an elementary school in Brocket, has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail for making and possessing child pornography.

44-year-old Mark Anderson pleaded guilty Monday, Jan. 21 to one count of making child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. According to an agreed statement of facts, Anderson had been in possession of child pornography going back nearly eight years.

Lethbridge Provincial Court Justice Paul Pharo also ruled that Anderson will also have to submit a DNA sample and will be added to the sex offender registry.

He will be able to possess one cell phone and one computer device but can only access the internet with adult supervision. He must not use any peer to peer or social media sites. The prohibition will last for 10 years.

Defense lawyer James Rouleau requested that Anderson serve his time at the Bowden Correctional Centre, because of the availability of sex offender programs there, and to reduce the danger to him. A risk assessment concluded that he was low risk to re-offend, even though in a statement to police, he said he couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t attracted to children.  

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Anderson, who had been working on the Piikani Nation, was arrested on Jan. 12, 2018, after an investigation by the ALERT Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit. It also involved Pincher Creek and Piikani Nation RCMP, as well as the Lethbridge Police Service.

According to police, the investigation began in July of 2017, when ICE was contacted by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children about materials being uploaded on social media. The timeline on the investigation was then accelerated when police learned that Anderson was teaching at the Napi’s Playground Elementary School in Brocket.

A review of the devices seized – both from his home and classroom – uncovered hundreds of images and some videos of child porn with the children in them ranging in age from three to 16. It was noted that some of the images were duplicates contained on various electronics. They also found that there had been certain file sharing programs on one of the computers at one point, but that they had been deleted and another program had been used to purge the information.