John Robin Sharpe, who has challenged Canada's child pornography laws, was acquitted of sexual assault but convicted of indecent assault by a Supreme Court jury, in a split ruling that involved charges stemming from incidents over two decades ago.
The incidents involved Sharpe and a then 14-year-old male hitchhiker whom he picked up near Vancouver. Though Sharpe admitted having sex with the boy, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the case actually moved around whether the boy was old enough to consent – Canadian law defines the legal age of sexual consent as 14.
Sharpe had been charged with making and distributing child porn in 1995. He challenged Canada's child porn laws, arguing they violated his free expression rights, but Canada's Supreme Court upheld those laws in 2001 except for ruling that people cannot be prosecuted for creating stories or images they don't intend to publish, and as long as their materials do not show "illegal" acts.
That ruling couldn't stop Sharpe from being sentenced to what accounts called house arrest for child porn possession in May 2002, in a case involving police finding 517 photographs of mostly young boys in his possession, the CBC said.
The current case tied to images found in Sharpe's possession, after British Columbian police issued a public call for one child pictured in some of the images to come forward, a call answered by a young man who turned out to fit the image of a boy said to have been in such sexual incidents between 1979 and 1982.
Sharpe was charged with sexual assault and indecent assault in August 2002. The British Columbia jury quashed a third charge, gross indecency. A sentencing date was not yet disclosed.
