B.C. man once celebrated as a volunteer firefighter jailed on child pornography charges

Child pornography, also known as child sexual assault material.

Warning: This story contains disturbing details.

A B.C. man whose volunteer work as a firefighter was once celebrated by the federal government is facing one year in jail for collecting more than 1,000 images of child pornography over a 23-year period.

George Wright, 69, plead guilty in provincial court to downloading pornographic photos featuring children aged three to 12 between 1997 and 2020, according to a sentencing decision posted last month.

While Wright had no previous criminal record, Judge Ted Gouge ruled the Crown’s recommended sentence of six months in jail, followed by two years’ probation, was inadequate due to the severity of Wright’s offence.

Wright’s collection “depicted acts of sexual aggression by adults upon children and by children upon other children,” which the judge reasoned is “much more grave” than a person downloading and storing an image of a naked child.

As a result, Wright was sentenced to one year in prison followed by three years’ probation.

BACKGROUND OF COMMUNITY SERVICE

The decision details that during the period Wright was collecting child pornography, he worked as a clerk at a local supermarket and as a volunteer firefighter who was eventually named the assistant fire chief.

The Colwood Fire Department lists a man named George Wright as its assistant fire chief in its 2012 annual report.

“His colleagues speak well of him,” Gouge noted.

The government of Canada awarded Wright the Fire Services Exemplary Service Medal twice over the course of his career—once in 2007 and again in 2012, according to the decision.

MOTIVE REJECTED

The 69-year-old explained to the court that he started collecting the illicit photos because he was “intellectually curious about how to access child pornography.”

“I wanted to track how bad it got,” Wright told Dr. Kimberly Kreklewetz, the psychologist who interviewed him for the presentence report.

“While on the surface Mr. Wright seemed to express concern regarding harm to the victims … he appeared emotionally detached as he described what he viewed. At no point did he describe feeling negative emotions such as disgust, anger or sadness, that one might expect someone to experience when viewing child pornography if they were not doing so for sexual purposes,” wrote Kreklewetz.

She assessed Wright as “low to moderate” risk to reoffend sexually, according to the sentencing decision.

Wright claims he was neither sexually aroused nor repulsed by the content. The court document also details the fact that the senior is a virgin who never pursued a heterosexual relationship because he said “women have moody cycles…I just couldn’t handle it.”

“In the end, I don’t think that it matters very much whether Mr. Wright’s characterization of his motive is truthful or accurate,” Gouge wrote in the decision.

The judge highlighted the fact that anyone who downloads and watched child pornography encourage its manufacture and distribution.

“Whatever his motive, Mr. Wright materially increased that demand over a 23-year period,” concluded the judge.

The sentencing decision detailed that Wright’s collection of child pornography will be destroyed, he’s required to provide a DNA sample and he will be on the sex offender registry for 10 years.