(BEN BULMER / iNFOnews.ca)

A North Okanagan man who was found with 50,000 images of child sexual abuse has been sentenced to 14 months in jail.

B.C. Provincial Court Judge Dennis Morgan said that while Ryan Adrien Pelletier had a "terrible childhood" it did not diminish the fact that the 39-year-old had collected all the images and hundreds of videos of very young children being sexually exploited and assaulted.

Pelletier had been living in Enderby in 2019 when Facebook alerted the RCMP of the images, according to a B.C. Provincial Court decision, published March 1.

Police got a warrant to search Pelletier's home and found eight SD cards hidden in a glasses case.

Pelletier wasn't home at the time but handed himself in to the RCMP the following day.

The SD cards contained 250,000 images and videos.

"It is disturbing in the extreme that the materials possessed by Mr. Pelletier included images of child victims as young as four and five years old being raped by adult males," Judge Morgan said.

Pelletier's lawyer had argued for a sentence of house arrest citing his client's horrific upbringing.

His mother had attended residential school and was an alcoholic. At one point she had beaten him so badly that he was now deaf in one ear. He never had contact with his father.

He had gone to live with an aunt after his mother was jailed for her part in trying to cover up a murder her brother committed.

He spent time in foster homes and was sexually abused when he was eight years old by another boy.

Despite his upbringing, Pelletier did not have a criminal record, had worked, and was the father to four children from a 10-year relationship.

Following the charges, he lost his home and ended up homeless.

In a psychological report presented to the court, Pelletier had said he had gone down a "rabbit hole" while accessing adult pornography on the internet.

"Mr. Pelletier reported being 'curious' and although recognizing that the content of the materials he was accessing became 'more and more wrong,' he 'wanted to see how far it would go,'" the decision reads.

Pelletier said he knew it was wrong and wanted it to stop. He said his life had been ruined and he had lost everything and was willing to take any treatment or counselling.

The decision says that Pelletier was in the low range to re-offend.

"I cannot find in these circumstances that the fact of Mr. Pelletier’s terrible childhood, rooted as it was in Canada’s historic colonial policies, made him not fully realize how wrong it was to amass and possess over 50,000 images and hundreds of videos showing the sexual exploitation and gross physical... harming of very young children," Judge Morgan said in handing down a 14-month jail sentence.

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