(LifeSiteNews) — There are few crimes more heinous than crimes against children. Canada’s Supreme Court, in a truly repulsive ruling on October 31, appears to disagree.
In the 5-4 decision, the court struck down the mandatory one year in prison for those possessing or accessing child abuse material. Trudeau appointee Justice Mary Moreau, writing for the majority, stated that:
The offences with which they are associated cover a very wide range of circumstances. They capture both the well-organized offender who, over the years, has accumulated thousands of files showing prepubescent victims, and the young 18-year-old offender who, one day, keeps and views a file showing a 17-year-old victim that was sent to the offender without them having requested it.
In short, the court decided to strike down the mandatory minimum for possessing or viewing child pornography based on hypothetical scenarios that did not actually engage with the cases before them. Mandatory minimum sentences were challenged by two offenders. One was Louis-Pier Senneville. Here is how the court described his crimes (reader discretion strongly advised, but the information is unfortunately relevant):
Louis‑Pier Senneville pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography and to one count of accessing child pornography. He admitted having been in possession of 475 files, including 317 images of children constituting child pornography. Of those images, 90 percent were of young girls between 3 and 6 years of age, some showing victims being subjected to acts of penetration and sodomy committed by adults and minors. Mr. Senneville admitted that he had acquired these images through specialized sites and that he had possessed them for 8 months. He accessed these images for 13 months.
The second offender was Mathieu Naud, who was also found guilty of distributing the material he watched—again, this is the court’s own description:
Mathieu Naud pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography and to one count of distribution of child pornography. He admitted having been in possession, for 13 months, of 531 images and 274 videos of child pornography, most of which were of children from 5 to 10 years of age being subjected to sexual abuse [Ed: details excised] by adults. Mr. Naud used specialized software to access that material, make it available and wipe out any traces of it.
Canada’s Supreme Court took the challenges of these two men and decided to instead rule on the overall constitutionality of mandatory minimum for such offenders—and came to the conclusion that they are unconstitutional. Senneville, for the record, was given a mere one-year sentence for those horrors, and Naud—who, again, not only watched those things but actually distributed them—was given only nine months for possessing the content, and 12 months for distributing it.
The hypothetical scenario used by the court to overturn mandatory minimum sentences was an 18-year-old involved in sexting an intimate image of a minor, which could conceivably result in prison time for the teen.
Conservative politicians across the country have widely condemned the ruling. “This ruling raises serious questions about whether the punishments will truly reflect the severity of these offences and the pain they inflict,” Nova Scotia Justice Minister Scott Armstrong stated on Saturday.
“Child pornography offences are not abstract or victimless. As a former school principal, I have seen first-hand the devastating harm that sexual exploitation of children can cause,” he emphasized. “Mandatory minimum sentences send a clear message that exploiting children is among the most serious crimes, and will be treated that way.”
“This decision is outrageous,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith concurred. “The possession of child pornography is a heinous crime, and even a one-year minimum sentence is already far too lenient. We call on the Federal Government to immediately invoke the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to overturn this ruling and ensure the protection of our children.”
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, for his part, vowed to do just that if given the opportunity. “Child porn users must face mandatory prison time. The Supreme Court ruling today removing those penalties was dead wrong,” he wrote on X. “Conservatives will use the Notwithstanding Clause to protect the rights of children by locking up child porn users with mandatory prison time. We must protect our children.”
In an interview on the CBC, he reiterated that promise, and added that his government would pass legislation to ensure mandatory minimum sentences for child porn users.
None of those responding to the ruling, however, appeared willing to address a corollary and to some extent underlying problem. Ubiquitous pornography use is driving sexual violence, and it is also driving people to child pornography. As I reported in First Things earlier this year:
The first is a disturbing report in the Guardian by Harriet Grant on the growing phenomenon of men who do not have the profile of a typical pedophile—a sexual interest in children—nonetheless being arrested for viewing and possessing child abuse material. These men ended up viewing child pornography when their addictions escalated and spiraled out of control. As one told her: ‘I didn’t start out wanting to see kids. I was addicted to porn and I went down a road of being totally desensitised as I got further and further from what was normal.’
The truth is that the consumption of child abuse material is reaching crisis levels across the West. Few want to discuss this fact, because an in-depth look at the reasons for this crisis would reveal that legal pornography is one of the primary culprits, leading some experts to refer to “porn-made pedophiles”—porn users who end up abusing minors after becoming addicted to this material online. If we are serious about protecting children, we cannot simply imprison predators and “throw away the key,” as Poilievre put it.
We have to address one of the primary sources of the problem: the legal porn industry. As I have written here many times, we can have a society that permits widespread porn use, or we can have a society that protects children—but we cannot have both.
