Promising to appeal, John Robin Sharpe was sentenced to two years minus one day for indecent assault July 19, the latest turn in the case of the man who has challenged Canada's child porn laws in that nation's highest court.
Sharpe was sentenced for indecent assault in a case involving a then-eleven year old boy with whom he had sex over a two-year time frame. The boy is now 35 and has testified Sharpe paid him in money, marijuana, and cigarettes to pose in hundreds of photographs while engaging in sexual acts.
Four years ago, Sharpe provoked a furor and a nationwide debate in Canada when he challenged part of the country's child porn laws that dealt with personal writings. The Canadian Supreme Court eventually upheld most of the law that bans producing, dealing, and possessing child porn images but held that banning personal journals, fictional writings and drawing, and other materials that don't involve a real child, was wrong.
That ruling got Sharpe acquitted on charges related to his personal writings while convicted on others. Prosecutors had wanted him sentenced to between two and four years for his crimes.
His victim didn't talk to reporters after the sentencing but had told the court that, while he liked Sharpe, he'd "have to kill" any man who did similar things to his own children.
