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Child pornography victims address predator in Yellowknife court

Mother fears child will “forever be that little girl caught in the images”
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Mario LaPlante, a former registered nurse who worked in Whatì, is awaiting sentencing on charges related to child pornography. Anna J. James/NNSL photo

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic details that may be disturbing to some readers.

Ongoing. Retraumatized. Prolonged. Permanent.

These are the words the victims of child pornography used to describe how one offender continues to impact their daily lives.

Former registered nurse Mario LaPlante, 64, with a ring of thinning, grey hair, sat in supreme court wearing a red, shiny polo shirt on Feb. 2 to hear from his victims.

In August 2021, the Ontario resident pleaded guilty to possessing and making pornography accessible to others. He is back in custody in Yellowknife while he awaits his sentence.

LaPlante’s case is complex due to the sheer volume and sensitive nature of the evidence; part of the Feb. 2 hearing was dedicated to discussing custody of a flash drive containing case evidence.

The Crown also noted a “conflict between experts” in that the two forensic psychiatrists who questioned LaPlante do not agree on a diagnosis — one believes he is “low risk” of reoffending.

On Aug. 22, 2019, the NWT RCMP seized LaPlante’s computer and iPhone at the health centre in Whatì, where he was working as a nurse.

SEE: RCMP charge 62-year-old man with child pornography offences

It took an RCMP computer forensics lab two weeks to unearth 39,873 unique images and 2,302 hours of child pornography. The lab confirmed LaPlante used online file sharing service BitTorrent to receive and share the illicit images. He did it via the internet connection at his workplace.

The NWT RCMP Internet Child Exploitation Unit (ICE) — a two-officer unit based in Yellowknife — spent another four weeks running the cache of images through a different specialized software system that reads several images simultaneously and reduces the need for a person to view them. The software is calibrated to classify that images meet the Criminal Code.

From this data, the ICE team complied an eight-minute and 30-second “representative sample” of the collection that Chief Justice Louise Charbonneau reviewed to understand the full extent of the crime.

The court mentioned that the material was so heinous that officers were to only review it for up to four hours in a morning to reduce the psychological trauma.

The rule exists for good reason: LaPlante’s collection depicted children from infancy to aged 12 in sexual acts of extreme depravity including sex toy use, oral sex, group sex, bestiality, and violence.

LaPlante sat before Charbonneau, lawyers and reporters while two recorded victim impact statements played on a television screen that loomed in the corner of the room.

The first woman was one of the children in some of the photos seized from LaPlante’s computer. The other spoke for her daughter, who was also identified as being among the children in the sizeable stash of footage.

Although the women’s faces were darkened to obscure their identity, their clear voices cut a commanding presence in the courtroom as they directly addressed LaPlante, and detailed the litany of ways that he had destroyed their lives through child pornography.

“Every day I live in fear that someone will see my pictures and they will recognize me, and I’ll be humiliated again” said the first victim. “I want it all erased; I want it all stopped. His crime never stopped.”

She said the abuse causes her mind to frequently “skip out.” Due to these breaks in concentration, she’s unable to obtain her driver’s licence, plan events or find a job.

She said she has trouble setting boundaries in relationships.

She can’t accept gifts.

Once, in college, her class was shown a video about child abuse and she ran out. She never went back.

Throughout her video statement, she returned to the idea of permanence, her image is out there, somewhere, and can never be erased. In her final statements, she addressed the court: “I want everyone who downloads those images to be punished. Why should they be free when I’m not?”

Then, the mother of other child pornography victim spoke of the “ongoing” effects of the crime.

“When I go to a mall or a sporting event I think, who here has seen my child abused?” she said.

The trauma has impacted her to the point where the mother says she can’t work.

“I feel dead,” she said.

She described how her daughter oscillates between anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue as she expends “all of her energy into carrying burden.”

She is afraid to go out and play, said the mother.

After the abuse, the daughter asked for her hair to be styled to cover her eyes, which her mother assumed was to hide her identity if the photos surfaced.

She wonders if her child will ever recover, or if she’ll “forever be that little girl caught in the images.”

The accused remained motionless as the video statements played. Only when counsel discussed the possible return of his iPhone did he appear to pay attention, snapping his head to the left to observe the exchange.

LaPlante appeared in court again on Feb. 3, where the Crown and defence laid out their closing arguments. Charbonneau expects to hand down a sentence in March or April.

Under the law, he is expected to receive between one and 14 years imprisonment.

If you know of a crime against a child, please contact the RCMP at 867-669-1111 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.