Retired child psychologist will fight to stay out of jail after guilty plea in child-porn case

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This article was published 13/01/2019 (1928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former Winnipeg child psychologist has pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography but will fight the law that says he has to go to jail for it.

Dr. Gary Anthony Shady appeared in provincial court Monday and admitted possession of the illegal images, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of six months in jail.

But defence lawyer Mike Cook signalled Shady plans to launch a constitutional challenge of the mandated jail term when he appears again for sentencing May 16.

“It’s not right that a 72-year-old man with no record, who has pleaded guilty should be subjected to the mandatory minimum,” Cook told the Free Press outside court.

Cook said he would ask for Shady to serve a suspended sentence and a period of probation if the challenge is successful adding his client admitted responsibility to police when he was arrested.

Officers with the Winnipeg Police Service internet child exploitation unit raided Shady’s Fort Rouge home in October. Police said they seized several pieces of electronic equipment and had identified child sexual abuse imagery that had been uploaded to an online storage and computing service.

The investigation began after a tip from a computer-service provider was received by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the U.S. That agency alerted the National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre in Ottawa and Winnipeg police.

No facts of the case were revealed in court Monday.

Shady was a practising child psychologist at the time of his arrest. He has since retired, Cook said.

He specialized in treating children diagnosed with Tourette syndrome and behaviour problems.

Corrections officials will meet with Shady and then prepare a pre-sentencing report on his background and personal circumstances.

Minimum sentences for possession of child pornography have existed in Canada since 2005 and mandatory jail penalties have increased twice since then, in 2012 and 2015, as the number of police-reported incidents began to soar, a recent Statistics Canada analysis shows.