Article contentThe offences were committed in June 2020, while Knowles was living at a hotel in Dartmouth after getting his statutory release from Dorchester Penitentiary, where he’d been serving a two-year sentence for previous child pornography convictions in New Brunswick.Article contentThe United States Department of Homeland Security contacted the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre in Ottawa to report that a man in Dartmouth had shared sexually explicit videos and pictures of toddlers and babies on Kik, an online instant-messaging and file-sharing app. The man had also engaged in conversations about sexually abusing children with two people in an online chat room.Article contentRCMP in Ottawa contacted police in the Halifax area, who were able to identify Knowles as the individual.Article contentPolice executed a search warrant at the Hearthstone Inn on June 26, 2020, arrested Knowles and seized his iPhone, which was found under the mattress in his hotel room. His statutory release was revoked and he was returned to prison.Article contentArticle contentForensic analysis of the phone revealed two chats but no illicit images or videos.Article content“As you’ll see from conversations he was having with two individuals on Kik, he was very deliberate about not maintaining or preserving images or videos on his phone, due to his prior involvement with the justice system regarding the production and accessing of child pornography,” Crown attorney Rob Kennedy said at sentencing.Article contentThe U.S. authorities said some of the videos and images shared by Knowles depicted young children being sexually abused.Article contentKennedy and defence lawyer Colin Coady jointly recommended the 2.5-year sentence, to be served consecutively to the two-year term Knowles was to finish in May 2021.Article contentKnowles’s conduct was “vile and reprehensible,” Kennedy said.Article content“A further consecutive penitentiary term will send a message to Mr. Knowles and like-minded individuals that they will face severe consequences for (possessing) and distributing child pornography,” he said.Article contentArticle contentKnowles also has two convictions for aggravated assault, both involving a girl who experienced cardiac arrest while hospitalized in Moncton in 2015 and was then airlifted to the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, where she continued to have life-threatening episodes.Article contentAfter Knowles’s access to the child was cut off, there were no further incidents of distress. Police determined he had stuck his fingers in the girl’s mouth on multiple occasions, causing her to stop breathing or go into cardiac arrest.Article contentKnowles was charged with aggravated assault in both provinces. He received sentences of two years in prison in Halifax in June 2018 and one year concurrent in Moncton in October 2018.Article contentHe was arrested in Saint John in September 2017 on charges of making and accessing child pornography and was sentenced in May 2019.Article contentCoady told the court his client had a “very significant problem he needs to address, and he’s doing the best he can to address it while in custody.”Article contentKnowles told the judge he just has sexual fantasies about children. “I would never really do it to a child,” he said.Article content“Though you may not believe that you would do those things, those things have been done,” Judge Rickcola Brinton said. “And because you’re a person distributing and possessing that material, those things can continue to be done to other children, to babies.”Article contentIn addition to the prison time and lifetime order restricting Knowles’s contact with children, the judge directed him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and prohibited him from ever having firearms.Article content
Convicted sex offender gets bail on latest breach charges, placed on house arrest at Eastern Passage address
