A Nakusp man has entered a plea of not guilty to a charge of possessing and distributing child pornography. Arthur Valentine Weeks, 56, entered a plea of not guilty in Nakusp Provincial Court on Mar. 28.
What was on Arthur Week’s computer that lead police to arrest him for possession and distribution of child pornography is still a mystery to his defence lawyer.
Weeks was arrested for the possession and distribution of child pornography late in July 2011, his computer was seized and a police forensics unit has investigated the contents of his computer since then.
The investigation that ultimately lead to Weeks’ arrest began on May 30, 2011. The B.C. Integrated Child Exploitation Unit (BC ICE) was alerted to two cases where images of naked children between the ages of 10 and 15 were uploaded from the same email address. After seeing the images that were uploaded from this email address, the arresting officer affirmed an information to the court. The information claims the images can be considered child pornography.
By tracking down the IP address associated with the email account, the RCMP were able to discover Arthur Weeks was the subscriber associated with the IP address.
After more investigation, the BC ICE believed that there was sufficient reason for his computer to be seized and examined for child pornography.
In December 2012, Weeks’ defence lawyer Ken Wyllie said the images on the machine have been referenced in the disclosure he received from the Crown, but he has not seen them yet himself. When he asked if the Crown council had viewed the images on the computer, Crown prosecutor Jordan Petty said they had. He said investigators wished to carry out further analysis of the material in order to determine if there was more forensic evidence for the disclosure.
On March 28, the case was back before the courts in Nakusp. Lawyer for the defence Wyllie once again made the complaint that he still had not seen the contentious images on his client’s hard drive, and what he had been given by the Crown was only a “perfunctory description of the imagery.” Not only were the images not available, but the location where the files were stored on the computer was still unknown by the defence council, said Wyllie.
Crown prosecutor Petty replied the delay was due to a backlog of evidence waiting to be processed by provincial forensics teams, but shouldn’t delay a plea entry. Wyllie did in fact enter a plea of not guilty on behalf of the accused Arthur Weeks.