PEIA Charlottetown man has pleaded guilty to sexually touching a teenage boy he was in a relationship with, as well as having hundreds of images depicting child sex abuse on his personal devices.Victim was under the age of 16 when relationship began, court hearsNicola MacLeod · CBC News · Posted: Oct 07, 2025 7:00 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours agoDylan Kurt Macdonald, 30, entered his pleas in P.E.I. Supreme Court in Charlottetown on Tuesday afternoon after being charged earlier this year. (Wayne Thibodeau/CBC)A Charlottetown man has pleaded guilty to sexually touching a teenage boy he was in a relationship with, as well as having hundreds of images depicting child sex abuse on his personal devices.Dylan Kurt Macdonald, 30, entered his pleas in P.E.I. Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon after being charged earlier this year. It was the first time details of Macdonald’s crimes had been shared in court. CBC News is withholding details like the time and place of the offences in order to protect the identity of the victim. Online activity flagged to policeAccording to documents filed in court, Macdonald first found himself on police’s radar a year ago when he tried to upload child sex abuse images to an online Adobe photo editing software. Those suspicious files were flagged to the P.E.I. RCMP’s Internet Child Exploitation unit, which then got warrants to search Macdonald’s home in February. There police seized devices like his phone, tablet, laptop and hard drives.WATCH | Charlottetown man pleads guilty to child porn, sexual touching charges:Charlottetown man pleads guilty to child porn, sexual touching chargesDylan Kurt Macdonald admits he was in a sexual relationship with a teen he believed was 16 years old. He had photos of that victim — and other young males — in his possession when RCMP showed up with a search warrant. CBC’s Nicola MacLeod explains. Macdonald’s devices ended up having “hundreds of pictures of adolescent males with exposed genitals,” but police also found a locked box that contained physical photos, including a yearbook photo of a teen on P.E.I.An officer found a number and called the male in the school photo, the victim, who told the officer that he and Macdonald had “met years before at camp and the two had been in a relationship,” and that MacDonald had taken photos of him.The court heard the two met at Oak Acres Camp when Macdonald was a counsellor and the victim was a camper, but the relationship did not begin until they met again years later. “After some time as friends, [the victim] made advances to initiate a dating relationship with [Macdonald], and after this friendship became more emotionally intimate, it also became sexually intimate,” reads an agreed statement of facts.The documents said that Macdonald believed the victim was 16 at the time, which is the age of consent in Canada. In reality, he was still 15 years old, meaning any sexual contact between the then-20-something Macdonald and the victim a crime. The court heard the two visited a motel during this time, and Macdonald photographed the victim engaging in a sexual act.”[Macdonald] admits that he did not take reasonable steps to ascertain [the victim’s] age prior to engaging with him sexually,” the agreed statement of facts reads. Macdonald and the youth continued their relationship consensually after he turned 16, but it has since ended.Troubles since arrestMacdonald was charged and released in the days after his home was searched. There were several conditions to that release, including that he not contact the victim or any person under the age of 16. Because his crimes involved misusing the internet, he was also to stay off any devices that he could use to access the web.Macdonald’s case will be back in court in early 2026 to fix a date for sentencing. The Crown and defence have both requested that MacDonald be assessed for sexual deviancy in the meantime. (Laura Meader/CBC)But Macdonald didn’t follow those conditions. He sent an audio file to the victim in early June, then called him from a phone he had access to while in an addictions treatment program two weeks later. When police went to arrest Macdonald for doing this, they found him in a car with a friend and “a youth under 16” — another breach of his conditions. A search of the car also uncovered a glass pipe, an unnamed drug, a cellphone the Crown said Macdonald “had clearly been using,” and a collapsible baton — a weapon Macdonald should not have had.Sentencing in 2026Macdonald has already served a 110-day sentence for those crimes and has remained in jail since June.Tuesday, he received special permission to be released from jail on strict conditions for a few days to visit with a dying family member. He agreed to bring himself back to jail next week.Macdonald’s case will be back in court in early 2026 to fix a date for sentencing. The Crown and defence have both requested Macdonald be assessed for sexual deviancy in the meantime.ABOUT THE AUTHORNicola is a reporter and producer for CBC News in Prince Edward Island. She regularly covers the criminal justice system and also hosted the CBC podcast Good Question P.E.I. She grew up on the Island and is a graduate of St. Thomas University’s journalism program. Got a story? Email nicola.macleod@cbc.caNicola MacLeod on X
P.E.I. man pleads guilty to sexually touching teen he was in illegal relationship with
