Joint child porn investigation leads to first-of-its-kind sentence in Canada

For the first time ever, an east Ottawa man was handed down a sentence that would see him pay restitution to a child in the Philippines.

A joint case by Ottawa police, the RCMP and U.S. Homeland Security led officials to charge Brent McMullen, 57, of Ottawa with multiple child pornography offences.

Police said they arrested McMullen and charged him in early September, in a case they have been working on since 2022.

On Jan. 31, he pleaded guilty to sexual interference and make child pornography and recieved a jail sentence of just over six years, a police press release reads.

He is also required to pay restitution to the child victim in the Philippines.

“This is the first time such a sentence has been handed down in Canada,” officials note.

Ottawa police said this investigation was possible due to help from the other agencies involved, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and the Crown attorney assigned to the case.

Could be precedent-setting case: Expert

For over a 100 years, psychological harm and financial remedies have been dealt with through the Canadian civil court system, Lara Karaian, associate professor of Institute of Criminology & Criminal Justice Carleton University, told CityNews.

“The courts have acknowledged that mental distress in criminal context, emotional harm is normally only addressed in the criminal law when it accompanies physical harm and this is somebody who’s all the way in the Philippines, so there is a lack of physical harm,” she said.

Karaian explained that typically restitution is used in criminal law for devising punishment, it is not supposed to be ordered for pain and suffering or emotional distress, that is dealt with through the civil law system.

She noted, that with few details available, she believes that the court is trying to acknowledge the “validity of mental suffering” the child experienced in this case.

“Of course restitution has always been part of sentencing, but not in terms of addressing emotional or psychological distress,” she said. “So, it does seem precedent-setting, not only for the child porn context, but potentially for broader context.”

Although Karaian assumes that the threshold for restitution for emotional distress and trauma would have to be very high. This could also have ramifications on perpetrators, depending on the sum of the restitution.

The idea of more penalties being introduced in emotionally traumatizing cases, possibly human-trafficking or intimate partner violence, does not shock Karaian.

“I would say that that is not surprising in a lot of ways, because we are seeing increasingly the courts trying to address some level of emotional distress or emotional trauma,” she said.