A young Yukon man has been sentenced to 15 months in jail for child luring and making sexually explicit material available to a child.
Billy Callahan-Smith, 18, pleaded guilty to the charges. He was sentenced by Yukon Supreme Court Judge Michael Cozens last week.
According to the agreed statement of facts, Callahan-Smith initiated a sexual conversation with a girl of about 12 years old on Facebook in March of last year.
Over the course of the conversation, which took place over the span of a month, he asked the girl if she wanted to see his genitals, and she replied that she did not.
At one point the girl asked Callahan-Smith to give her an iPod, because she had heard he had some. He offered her “two iPods for sex,” according to the decision.
Shortly after that the girl’s mother contacted police, and Callahan-Smith was arrested just after midnight on April 27, 2014.
Through the subsequent investigation police learned that Callahan-Smith had contacted a second young girl and asked her if she wanted to be “friends with benefits.”
She blocked his account but Callahan-Smith created a new account and started a new conversation with her. He sent her a photo where his genitals were visible, and asked the girl to send him pictures.
Callahan-Smith is a member of the Kwanlin Dun First Nation. The court heard that both of his grandmothers attended residential school, and that he suffers from a number of mental health issues.
“I am concerned about the risk Mr. Callahan-Smith poses to youth,” Cozens wrote in his decision.
“His attraction to pre-pubescent females is extremely disconcerting. His high-risk rating for reoffending is warranted on the information before me. If he does not receive and actively engage in treatment and alter his behaviour through this treatment, there is every reason to believe he will re-offend, and that this re-offending will cause harm.
“However, due to Mr. Callahan-Smith’s youth and other limitations, I am less willing to find that he needs to be separated from society for a lengthy period of time. If he does not receive and respond positively to treatment in the future, this may turn out to be the case. We are not yet at that point. What Mr. Callahan-Smith needs now is treatment in hopes that his issues, of what I consider to be sexual deviancy, can be addressed and his risk reduced.”
With credit for time served, Callahan-Smith has 59 days left on his sentence as of Friday last week.
After release he will be on probation for three years. He will have to meet a number of conditions while on probation, including abiding by a curfew, avoiding the two female victims, avoiding children under the age of 16 unless supervised by an approved adult, and attending all treatment programs mandated by a probation officer.
Contact Jacqueline Ronson at
jronson@yukon-news.com