A 38-year-old Edmonton woman admitted yesterday she sent sexual pictures of her and her young son to her “master” from an online chat room specializing in bondage.
The woman, who has cerebral palsy and gets around using a motorized wheelchair, pleaded guilty to one count of sexual interference with a person under 14 and one count of transmitting child pornography.
Crown prosecutor Steven Bilodeau, who specializes in Internet crimes, called it an “extremely unusual case.”
The woman cannot be named under a court-ordered publication ban in order to protect the identity of her son, aged eight.
According to court documents, the unlawful sexual touching and the distribution of the child porn happened between Jan. 1, 2001 and April 5, 2004.
A psychological assessment of the woman reveals she first met her “master,” an Ottawa man identified only as Thomas, in an Internet chat room for people interested in a Bondage-Discipline-Sadism-Masochism (BDSM) lifestyle.
The woman told the psychologist the chat room seemed to be a place “for someone like me to feel like I belonged” and being submissive made her feel she had some worth.
She said Thomas began to “train” her in the role of a “good submissive girl,” which included memorizing the house rules: “One, protect the house. Two, what you see and do in the house stays in the house. Three, obey the master at all cost.”
Over a period of time, Thomas began directing her to engage in sexual activities with sex toys on a web-cam.
It then progressed to him sending her child porn and her sending him nude pictures of her son touching himself.
Thomas, whom the psychologist described as a “pedophilic predatory man,” also talked to the woman’s son on the phone several times and was planning to move to Alberta.
The woman admitted to the psychologist the sexual contact she had with her son was “wrong” and she felt guilty.
“She told me that it felt as if Thomas was controlling her mind at the time and she still does not understand how that happened,” said the psychologist.
“At this time, she believes that she trusted inappropriately, that he abused that trust and that what she did was ‘stupid’,” said the psychologist.
Contact with Thomas was broken off five months after the woman was questioned by police in April 2004 and she returned a bracelet (her “collar”) to him in October 2004.
A Court of Queen’s Bench sentencing hearing is slated for June 1 and the woman, who no longer has custody of her son, continues to remain free on bail.