David Clayton Willerth pleaded guilty to luring young girls over the Internet and was sentenced to four years in prison.
(CHARLOTTE HELSTON / iNFOnews.ca)
December 30, 2014 - 2:30 PM
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VERNON - A growing number of child pornography and online luring cases are passing through Canadian courts, and Vernon is no exception.
In 2014, three men — a Seattle private school ski coach, a former cop and a Vernon man who pretended to be a modeling agent — appeared at the Vernon courthouse to answer to criminal charges.
Jason Paur, 43, was arrested after female students on a ski trip from Seattle found a video camera hidden in their room at Silver Star Mountain Resort. Paur is charged with three counts of secretly observing or recording nudity in a private place, one count of accessing child pornography, one count of possessing child pornography, and three counts of breaking and entering a dwelling with intent. He was denied bail and continues to await his January 2015 trial at the Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre. Meanwhile, Paur was also indicted on additional charges in the U.S. The process to extradite him is expected to begin after his trial in Vernon. The U.S. indictment alleges Paur used the pictures for his own sexual gratification, and transported the pictures across the border.
Former Vernon mountie Ryan Hampton, 35, continued to move through the courts in 2014. He was arrested in June 2013 and charged with possessing and accessing child pornography, as well as obstructing justice and breaching court ordered conditions. Following a preliminary inquiry in March 2014, a judge ordered Hampton stand trial on the accusations starting March 2. Hampton resigned from the RCMP after his arrest.
Unlike Paur and Hampton, a third man’s case wrapped up in Vernon Supreme Court this year. David Clayton Willerth, born in 1974, pleaded guilty to luring young girls over the Internet and was sentenced to four years behind bars. Willerth used a fake Facebook account to contact at least 16 victims between ages 12 and 16 and told them he was a modeling agent. He told the girls to send him sexy and nude photographs, but that all came to an end after a pair of 14-year-old girls had enough of his harassment and told their parents. The judge in the case called Willerth “predatory in the truest sense of the word.”
To contact the reporter for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infonews.ca or call 250-309-5230. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
News from © iNFOnews, 2014