After guilty plea in child porn case, B.C. lawyer agrees he won't practice for 10 years

A file photo shows a statue inside the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, B.C.

A British Columbia lawyer agreed that he won't practice law for at least a decade after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.

David Andrew Riddell entered the plea in September 2019, though the 10-year ban began late last month. The disciplinary action follows an RCMP investigation into allegations dating between 2015 and 2017.

In documents outlining the disciplinary outcome, the Law Society of British Columbia wrote that "key admitted facts" included that the investigation began in the summer of 2016. At that time, the RCMP received reports from the B.C. Integrated Child Exploitation Unit and from the National Centre of Missing and Exploited Children that someone had uploaded an image considered child pornography into some kind of internet chat room.

The person was using an account with the name "daddy," the LSBC wrote, and was believed to be located in Maple Ridge, based on the internet service provider address.

The RCMP used that information to identify a residence connected to the user. The home was Riddell's, the list of admitted facts says.

For reasons not outlined by the law society, the home was not searched until July of the following year. At that time, the RCMP seized electronic devices "which contained a number of images and videos falling within the definition of child pornography," the law society decision said.

Mounties estimated there were about 150 images and two videos. Investigators said there was also evidence that at least 25 files had been opened.

Riddell informed the law society within days of the search warrant, and agreed in a voluntary undertaking not to take on any clients under the age of 19, be in the presence of minors unless they are with a parent or legal guardian in relation to his law practice, and not to practice family or criminal law for the time being.

Riddell was charged in July 2018, and reported the update to the society the same day.

Though he was released from custody at the time, Riddell, who worked at a firm and then for himself in Maple Ridge, primarily in real estate and commercial matters, stopped practicing as a result of the criminal proceedings.

About a year later, the documents say, Riddell entered a guilty plea to the possession charge. In February 2020, he was given a nine-month conditional sentence, followed by 15 months of probation.

The law society wrote that Riddell himself proposed the disciplinary action taken as a result of his misconduct, and that the undertaking began on Jan. 27. Riddell will not be able to practice law in B.C. until Jan. 27, 2032.

If he is to be reinstated after that date, conditions may be imposed by a credentials panel to "address the protection of the public," the tribunal wrote.