The climax of a multi-day trial on child pornography and Internet luring, the
images, many of them capturing what appeared to be pre-teen girls in sexual
situations, were shown in open court as part of a labelling process wherein the
Crown, defence and judge each recorded their definition of each picture.
Earlier in the trial, defence lawyer Ken Tessovitch told the court he planned
to take issue with many of the pictures submitted as evidence, noting that, in
some of them, both the age of the participant and the actions weren't clear.
"Many of them, in my submission, aren't going to qualify as child pornography,"
he said.
Crown prosecutor Jonathan Oliphant responded by saying the number found to
qualify as child pornography wasn't as important as what they said about the
possessor.
Under the Criminal Code of Canada, child pornography can be defined as a
photograph "that shows a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of
18 years and is engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual
activity or the dominant characteristics of which is the depiction, for sexual
purpose, of a sexual organ or the anal region of a person under the age of
eighteen years."
Gurr was arrested in December 2004 by Kamloops police officers following a
brief investigation sparked when a local parent complained a modelling flyer
her daughter had brought home from the mall seemed suspicious.
The single-page flyer offered girls aged nine to 12 cash to model. When
investigators looked into the modelling agency, it was found to be
non-existent.
Local officers forwarded a copy of the flyer to a member of the Integrated
Child Exploitation Unit (ICEU) in the Lower Mainland, who entered into an
exchange with the purported agency.
Posing as a 12-year-old girl, Sgt. Janise Gray agreed to meet a photographer of
the alleged agency at the Sahali Mall Safeway store on the night of December
10, 2004.
At the outset of the trial, Gray told the court she purposefully misspelled
words and used poor grammar when corresponding with the suspect in an attempt
to gain his trust.
"[I did it] to exhibit myself as a child," she said. "As a 12-year-old girl."
Laying in wait, Kamloops officers tracked the unidentified man who showed up at
the agreed meeting time, following as he drove off in his car. They pulled the
man over as he left and arrested him.
Gurr was subsequently charged with possession of child pornography and using
the Internet to lure minors.
When searched he was found to be in possession of sexual paraphernalia, a
camera and a key to a hotel room. In a subsequent search of his rental unit,
his computer equipment including several external media devices were retrieved.
Const. Tyler Svendson, who at the time of the investigation was a computer
expert with the Integrated Crime Unit, explained to the court mid-week how he
used specialized software to retrieve all the information from the seized hard
drive.
In addition to the 278 images, Svendson retrieved four separate chat
conversations and a copy of a modelling pamphlet Gurr is believed to have used
to lure pre-teen girls into sexually compromising situations.
Svendson noted the hard drive had been recently formatted, adding this is done
either as a cleaning technique to speed up a computer or as a method to hide
the drive's content.
He said he was not able to determine how the images arrived on the hard drive
or how many times they had been accessed or viewed.
Final submissions began yesterday but the results were unavailable by KTW's
morning deadline.
