P.E.I. man gets 5 years prison for 4th child pornography conviction

A P.E.I. man was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison for his fourth conviction on child pornography charges.

Clay JamesMeron, 48, pleaded guilty to one charge of distributing child pornography.

In passing sentence, Chief Provincial Court Judge Nancy Orr said the P.E.I. courts have never seen someone with so many convictions on child pornography charges.

Police alerted through cyber tip

"Rehabilitation is not a factor at this point in time," she said. "He has had the programs and yet he is still back."

Meron's previous convictions were in 2003, 2004 and 2007.

In this most recent case,police started investigating Meronwhen the national cyber tip centre got an alert that someone at a computer on P.E.I. had uploaded an image of child pornography.

RCMP traced it to Meron's house in Cornwall, P.E.I., arrested him and seized a number of laptops, hard drives and smart phones among other materials in December 2016.

Court heard most of the material was encrypted and Merondeclined to provide the passwords to investigators. However, 11 images that were not encrypted were determined to be child pornography.

Meron fires lawyer

Meronfired hisdefence lawyer at the start of Tuesday's sentencing hearing.

He told the court the computers seized were second hand and he had no idea what was on them.

Meronalso said he and his common-law partner were doing extensive research online to fight againstchild pornography.

The judge dismissed that explanation.She noted his cell phone contained photos of young girls taken in public places around Charlottetown.

3 previous convictions

Meron was last in court 10 years ago, on his third conviction, at which time he was sentenced to four years prison. Investigators found half a million pornographic images on items seized from his home.

• 4 years for 3rd child porn conviction
• Meronout after child porn conviction

Back in 2003, at his first arrest, police seized thousands of images from his computers. While thatcase was still before the courts, he was arrested a second time.

In 2004, he was the first P.E.I. offender to be put on the national sex offender registry.

• Merongets 2 years in jail

Lifetime ban on contact with anyone under 16 years

Orr also put several restrictions on Meron, includinga banfor the rest of his life from having unsupervised contact with anyone under 16.

Orr also ordered the computer equipment seized from Meron's home destroyed, including computer hard drives, USB drives, laptops, and a shoebox full of CDs.

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