No jail time for B.C. man with ‘relatively modest’ child porn collection, judge rules

In this Thursday, July 11, 2013 photo, the Tumblr logo is displayed at Nasdaq, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Warning: This story contains disturbing details.

A B.C. man convicted on child pornography charges can serve his sentence in the community, in part because of the “relatively modest” size of his collection, a judge has ruled.

Mark Keenan pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing child pornography in Kelowna provincial court, and was handed a conditional sentence of two years less a day.

The 54-year-old will be under house arrest for the first 18 months of his sentence, then bound by a 6 p.m. curfew for the remainder.

The court heard RCMP searched Keenan’s home in 2018 after receiving concerning information about his activity on the social media website Tumblr, and found six child pornography images on his electronic devices depicting boys between the ages of nine and 16.

In his May 2 sentencing decision, which was recently posted online, Judge Andrew Tam noted the size of Keenan’s collection “sets this case apart” from others cited in court, some of which involved hundreds or even thousands of images and videos being seized from other sex offenders.

“Although there is no strict mathematical relationship between the size of the collection and the length (or indeed type) of sentence, the size of a collection has often been held to be an aggravating factor,” Tam wrote.

“It stands to reason then that a modest collection, while not a mitigating factor, could nevertheless distinguish it from other cases.”

None of the images depicted penetrative sexual activity, the court heard, though one showed a grown man and a child victim with their hands on each other’s genitals.

‘Most damning evidence’ from police statement

Despite pleading guilty to the charges, Keenan maintained that he is not sexually attracted to children, and had only stumbled upon the child pornography in 2017 while “searching for other images such as sunsets and beaches,” according to the decision.

Keenan said was appalled by what he found, and decided to start a Tumblr blog to lure out paedophiles so he could report them to the site’s moderators in a kind of “undercover sting.”

The judge was not convinced.

Tam noted that Keenan remained in possession of the images a year after finding them, and had been carrying on conversations with other Tumblr users in which he expressed “interest in sexual activities with children.”

“They are unnecessarily graphic and go well beyond what one may expect in order to identify who may be a paedophile on the website,” Tam found. “His participation in these conversations seems too genuinely earnest for it to be a ruse.”

The judge ultimately ruled, on a balance of probabilities, that Keenan’s collection and his online conversations were for his own sexual gratification.

“The most damning evidence will come from Mr. Keenan’s own mouth,” Tam added. “Upon his arrest, he gave a voluntary statement to police. When confronted with the Tumblr messages and asked if he were aroused by them, he replied, ‘I mean, in a way, it’s hard not to be.’”

The judge considered Keenan’s guilty plea, his lack of a prior criminal record, and supportive letters from the community as mitigating factors while determining that a conditional sentence was appropriate.

Keenan will be on probation for a year after his sentence is over, and must submit a DNA sample to law enforcement.