Appeals court doubles sentence for dead pedophile

A B.C. appeals court nearly doubled the sentence for a convicted pedophile Friday, despite the fact that the offender was already dead.

In her written decision, Justice Catherine Ryan acknowledged the death of 54-year-old Warren Robert Allen, who was jailed earlier this year for sexually assaulting a teen boy and possessing violent child pornography.

But Ryan argued the problems with Allen’s original sentence of three years and three months were worth rectifying regardless.

“Counsel for the Crown has submitted that in spite of Mr. Allen’s unfortunate death, the court ought not to declare the matter abated,” Ryan wrote. “I agree… it is in the interests of justice to release the reasons and pronounce judgment.”

Allen was arrested in 2010 after unwittingly providing 6,700 images of child pornography to an undercover cop.

Vancouver police seized his computer and as many as five hard drives, which contained a combined 880,000 images, videos and chat conversation histories. Detectives characterized much of the visuals they found as extreme, with victims being bound and assaulted.

“Given the description of what the videos and photographs contained, the activity depicted therein is nothing less than torture. One is left to wonder in what condition the abused children were left, or whether they even survived what was done to them,” Ryan wrote.

Poring over Allen’s chat histories, investigators also found evidence that the offender, who was HIV positive, had engaged in a threesome with a 14-year-old boy and another grown man suffering from the same disease.

The defence pointed out that the boy consented to the sex, and was not tricked into meeting the much-older men, but did not press it as a mitigating factor.

Due to the nature of the offences, Ryan argued the sentencing judge had erred by giving primary consideration to Allen’s rehabilitation rather than denouncing his actions.

“The sentence imposed on Mr. Allen ought to have communicated society’s condemnation of his conduct. It ought to have been one which represented a symbolic, collective statement,” she wrote.

Allen was originally ordered to register as a sex offender for 20 years. Ryan upgraded that order to last the duration of his life. The other justices agreed unanimously.