A computer software developer described as a fan of child porn is going to prison for life for having sex with, strangling, and dismembering 10-year-old Holly Jones in May 2003.
Michael Joseph Briere's videotaped confession to police – after his DNA turned up under the little girl's fingernails – included the stunning admission that he had gotten himself excited viewing child porn on his computer and gone out looking for precisely such a little girl to have sex with, to satisfy what he called a lifelong fantasy. He also admitted to snatching Holly from behind on the street.
"[H]e was a regular, frequent consumer of Internet child porn, both at home and at MDS Inc., the large lab-testing firm where he worked," according to the Toronto Globe and Mail. "The hundreds of images recovered from his home computer by forensic experts, and which police were able to show he downloaded as often as twice a day, all featured prepubescent girls between 10 and 12 years old."
The girl's parents were not in the courtroom very long during the June 17 sentencing, but Marie Jones, in a victim impact statement published on the Internet, said a sickness now lived in her stomach with pain in her heart and horror in my mind "and a hell that surrounds my body" over the crime and the death of her daughter.
"We know now that we will never get that complete feeling of happiness again," Mrs. Jones said in the statement. "This person has made us suffer for the rest of our lives. Sadness will now live with us forever.
"There can be no closure for us here today," her statement continued. "We will always continue to think of Holly every waking moment. Our hope is that Holly's tragic death will be not an end but a beginning. Our demand is that Holly's life and legacy will live on long past this day."
Indeed, the family's attorney told reporters Holly's parents would have a legislative reform package ready to submit to Parliament by the fall, named for the little girl and including as-yet unspecified changes in Canada's child porn and DNA laws, plus potential improvements to Canada's national sex registry legislation.
Police and prosecutors alike told reporters outside court that the case offered at least one solid enough link between child porn and violent crime. Whenever "someone says that child pornography is a victimless crime and harmless," said Tornoto Crown attorney Tom Culver, the Briere-Jones case would "remove any doubt."
In other news on the fight against child porn:
RUGBY, England –There's a right way and a wrong way to fight child porn, as self-styled child porn vigilante Lee Spooner is learning the hard way. The British man is going to jail for four years and ten months, following his conviction for threatening a man convicted of child porn possession through his pregnant wife.
BELFAST – Four men in Northern Ireland have been arrested in a continuing police probe into online child porn, following searches carried out over two weeks involving 25 people and the seizure of about 100 computers and "an extensive amount of software."
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Having one of the largest collections of child pornography U.S. attorneys had ever found in this court district got William Kisor a nine-year sentence – in addition to 46 months he was serving already, for crossing state lines to have sex with a 16-year-old girl he met on the Internet in 2001. The child porn collection was said to include over eight thousand computer images.
REGINA, Canada – A Philippines-born priest faces charges of making child porn and soliciting children for sexual purposes. Rev. Pedro Surtida Aldea appeared in court June 17 in the case, in which he was arrested in late May when returning from a vacation. Aldea has stepped down voluntarily from his parish posts until the case is resolved.
