Give disabled perv a break: Lawyer
Posted By MEGAN GILLIS / QMI Agency
Posted 5 months ago
OTTAWA—The Crown is seeking up to year in jail for a 28-year-old who trolled the Internet for pubescent girls — including 13-year-old U.K. twins who stripped and performed sex acts via webcam.
But Jorge Carepa's lawyer is seeking the minimum of 45 days, arguing serving time will be too much for his client, who has cerebral palsy.
Carepa pleaded guilty to invitation of sexual touching in connection with contact with an undercover cop in Nov. 2008.
Ottawa police had been investigating two complaints about someone claiming to be an 80-year-old man chatting up young girls on Interpals.net.
The parents of a 13-year-old Alabama girl complained she was chatting with someone claiming to be a retired Catholic girls' school teacher.
Ottawa police then got a third complaint involving a webcam video of a young teen exposing herself and masturbating posted by "dirtyman1927" to YouTube.
Posing as a 13-year-old, a detective added dirtyman1927 to her user list. He contacted her and started "grooming" her, showing her porn and telling her to touch herself and offering to take her shopping and for her first bikini wax.
Carepa was arrested in November 2008 when he went to meet the "girl" at a mall.
When police seized Carepa's computers, they found child pornography, chat logs and web cam videos involving two 13-year-olds who were later identified as twins in the United Kingdom.
The sisters were shown naked and performing sexual acts on themselves with objects.
Defence lawyer Mark Ertel argued that the judge should consider Carepa's "exceptional" circumstances.
"This man has had a very difficult and isolated life," he said. "He has not had things in life most of us take for granted — relationships with other people, a sense of belonging, not being the subject of derision."
Carepa — whom a psychiatrist concluded poses a very low risk of reoffending — apologized in court and said he was deeply remorseful.
"He's not the person that you make an example of," Ertel argued. "One day in jail for him is like 90 days in jail for someone else."
But prosecutor Marie Dufort argued she'd already taken Carepa's challenges into account in seeking nine to 12 months in jail and three years' probation.
Otherwise, she'd be asking for a sentence approaching two years for "degrading, dehumanizing and objectifying" children.
"Children are the most vulnerable members of the community," she said. "Luring them into sexual acts must attract denunciation and deterrence."
megan.gillis@sunmedia.ca
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