R v Lund, 2016 ONCJ 858

This is a Dangerous Offender application. The accused was charged with multiple sexual offences against 14 victims ranging in age from 2 years old to adulthood after a 15 year-old girl reported him to the Ontario Provincial Police. She had been sexually involved with the accused for only three weeks, but within that time he had not only had sex with her but filmed their sex acts, encouraged her to film her 9-year-old sister nude, encouraged her to babysit even younger children so he could gain sexual access to them, and asked her to teach her 9-year-old sister to perform sexual acts upon him. The accused had also sent her sexual images involving animals. She provided text messages and images they had exchanged.

At the time of arrest, police seized five cellphones, a laptop computer and a GoPro camera that had been installed pointing at the accused’s bed. Forensic analysis of these devices revealed that he had been committing sexual offences against young girls, children and animals for almost a decade and had active plans for many more sexual crimes.

The accused was charged with 129 adult counts and 88 counts under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He pleaded guilty to 35 counts which included one count of bestiality, communicating with a person under 16 to commit bestiality and compel to commit bestiality and two counts of counsel to commit bestiality, among several other child sexual assault and child pornography-related offences.

The judge held that the evidence as a whole had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused met the multiple statutory tests for designation as a dangerous offender. He presented a risk to cause injury, pain and other harm to others in the future through failure to control his sexual impulses. There was no explicit consideration of the animal abuse charges in this discussion.

It was determined that the Crown has proved that the accused met the dangerousness criteria in section 753(1) and accordingly the judge designated him to be a Dangerous Offender.

Note: it appears that when considering designation of a dangerous offender the court may not consider animal abuse. Section 753(1)(a)(i) and (ii) of the Criminal Code only list harm to “other persons”. However, the judge did not explicitly say that animal abuse could not be considered, sections 753(1)(a)(iii) does not specify the damage must be to “a person”, and (b) lists “injury, pain or other evil to others”, which could be interpreted to include animals.