By Patrick Burles - @PatrickBurles on Twitter

Defence application to strike sexual assault, child luring guilty pleas set for February

Oct 22, 2018 | 1:07 PM

LETHBRIDGE – A hearing has been scheduled for early next year, at which time a Coaldale man will get a chance to convince a judge that guilty pleas he entered to charges of sexual assault and child luring should be struck from the record.

Trevor Pritchard entered the pleas in April – his fourth conviction for sexually assaulting adolescent girls – prompting the Crown to seek a dangerous offender designation for him.

Following the guilty pleas, Pritchard parted ways with his lawyer and retained William Wister to handle the proceedings. Since taking over, Wister has argued that his client did not fully understand the implications of the guilty pleas when he entered them under previous counsel, and launched an application have the pleas struck.

The hearing, which will be before the Queen’s Bench Justice who accepted Pritchard’s guilty pleas, has been scheduled to run Feb. 5 – 7, 2019.

“Dangerous offender applications, if they’re granted, have the capacity to restrict somebody for an indefinite period of time in custody, which is an extraordinary remedy as provided under the Criminal Code [of Canada]. It is the most serious form of restriction on people’s freedom, and we value freedom in our society,” Wister told members of the media following a court appearance in September.

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“There’s an obligation to determine, as I said in court, that [Pritchard] fully understood the implications of that,” continued Wister. “You have to look at people’s mental capacity, what they understood – not so much what’s being said, but what do they take away from it.”

Wister has said he would like to see the guilty pleas removed and for the matter to be scheduled for trial.

Guilty pleas

Following the two guilty pleas from Pritchard on April 9, an agreed statement of facts was presented to the court.

It was admitted that Pritchard met the 15-year-old victim on Facebook and they started communication via text message. On Jan. 17, 2017, she agreed to meet him in person, believing that he would take her to a job interview. Pritchard instead took the girl to his home in Coaldale, told her, “The interview was not going to happen,” then forced her to participate in various sexual acts. After, he drove her home and said he would kill her if she told anyone.

The girl told her mother about what had happened hours later, and after speaking to police, she was taken to the Chinook Regional Hospital for a sexual assault examination.

After those allegations came to light and Pritchard was first charged, police asked others to come forward. It was at that time that two girls under the age of 16 contacted police – resulting in the trial by judge alone that is scheduled for November.

Pritchard’s three prior convictions for sexually assaulting adolescent girls came in 2004, 2009 and 2010.