One of these days someone’s going to twig to the fact that it’s not such a hot idea to send sexually intimate and explicit pictures of your loved one over the internet, certainly if they are sent with malice and without permission.
Take this 40-year-old married guy in British Columbia, whose name can not be made public because of a publication ban.
Turns out he was having an affair and a month after he and his girlfriend had a bad break-up in the summer of 2016, he apparently decided to to get even by sending some pictures of her breasts and vagina on Facebook Messenger in to her cousin, a co-worker of hers and a friend of hers.
Bad move.
On Monday, he was at a sentencing hearing in the Provincial Court of British Columbia in Vancouver, pleading guilty.
According to the Crown, those pictures he sent wound up on some internet sites in eastern Europe, “devastating” his former lover.
Charges against the Vancouver man–publication of an intimate image without consent–came into force in March 2015 as part of the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act. (CBC)
He, meanwhile, could wind up doing jail time.
Prosecutors want one-to-three months in a “real jail,” not house arrest or community service.
In his own defence, the man maintains he, too, is a victim, saying the woman’s phone was hacked and photographs of the couple engaged in sexual activity also ended up on the internet.
The Crown says it has no evidence to support that claim.
Through all this, the man and his wife are still a couple.
She was in the courtroom Monday but left when the intimate photographs were being described in detail.
The charges against him–publication of an intimate image without consent–came into force in March 2015 as part of the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act.
The longest sentence imposed so far in Canada came in May of last year when a 32-year-old Ontario man was sentenced to five months in jail for posting videos to a website called Xvideos.com accompanied by graphic titles that included the woman’s first and last name.
The judge in the Vancouver man’s case will impose her sentence on May 10.
With files from CBC, CP
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