Calgary detective holds back tears discussing Alberta child porn investigation

After three months of investigation, 16 Albertans have been charged with multiple child porn charges, including 11 from Calgary.

The Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams ICE Unit conducted ‘Operation Ice Breaker’ from April to June, targeting people accessing child porn and resulted in 56 charges.

ICE (Internet Child Exploitation) Detective Sean Spence fought back tears as he described some of the content found on the 510 devices seized.

“They’re difficult to watch and get through,” he said, followed by a pause. “They are children that are being sexually assaulted upon and offenders that are engaged in this kind of behaviour and are observing and watching these videos are getting sexual gratification from the rape and immense pain that is inflicted upon a child.”

In total, investigators have seized 28 terabytes of data and of those 510 devices seized, only 160 have been reviewed so far.

The age ranges of the victims go from infants in diapers to 17 years old.

The range of content includes a child being inappropriately touched to older victims being brutally sexually assaulted and in one video, killed.

“It’s important to understand that these images are, and these videos, are a crime in progress,” Spence said.

While all the accused are facing charges of possession and transmitting child porn, several are also charged with making child porn, which can be as simple as altering an image.

“Offenders on the Internet are very weary of police presence and they want to obtain more and new fresh images, so they’ll only trade with other offenders if they provide them with new images, so this is leading to an increase in child sexual assault and images being created,” he said.

One of the offenders is just 16 years old and cannot be identified.

“It’s concerning because it could be a one-off, it could be just a learning experience, it could be a lack of knowledge or it could be an indication of what’s to come in the future,” Spence said. “It’s unfortunate when we have to charge a young offender with these kinds of crimes.

There is some good news in this disturbing story, as two child victims were identified and rescued, one from the United States in Tennessee and the other from Kingston, Ontario.

There were multiple agencies involved in the operation including the Calgary Police Service, RCMP, Dept. of Homeland Security, and other American and Canadian departments.

ICE Insp. Dave Dubnyk said in all, 25 search warrants were executed.

“It clearly demonstrates that child exploitation continues to be an in issue in Alberta and impacts communities both large and small within the province,” he said.

The 16 people accused are facing a total of 56 child pornography related charges:

Adam Adler, 39, of Calgary;
Marvin Agboro, 18, of Strathmore;
Darian Blanchard, 21, of Red Deer;
Brent Bulycz, 42, of Calgary;
Curtis Brock, 27, of Airdrie;
Yency Gomez, 38 of Calgary;
Andrew Halliday, 28, of Red Deer;
Ryland Jacklin, 28, of Airdrie;
Kyle Jacobson, 32, of Calgary;
Devin Lamont, 27, of Calgary;
Mikael Macek, 25, of Calgary;
Brandon McKnight, 23, of Calgary;
Ole Olsen, 38, of Calgary;
David Steele, 44, of Calgary;
John Stewart, 47, of Calgary; and
a 16-year-old young offender from Calgary.