A 30-year-old Burnaby man charged with the armed sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl he lured online during the COVID-19 lockdown last spring has been sentenced after pleading guilty to lesser charges.
Sheldon James Lowney was charged last year with luring a child, sexual interference, sexual assault with a weapon, possession of a loaded restricted weapon, using a firearm while committing or trying to commit sexual assault, making child pornography and possession of child pornography in relation to incidents on May 2, 2020.
Lowney pleaded guilty in February to four of the seven charges: luring, sexual interference, possession of a loaded restricted weapon and possession of child pornography.
He also pleaded guilty to having a handgun while prohibited by a court order.
The other charges were stayed as part of a plea deal, according to the BC Prosecution Service.
Another charge of breaking a previous court order for not reporting his proper residential address between Feb. 14 and May 10, 2020 was also stayed.
Lowney was sentenced last Thursday (May 27) to a total of eight years and two months in prison.
After credit for time he's already served since his arrest on May 10, 2020, that means he is set to spend another six years and seven months behind bars.
‘Online almost constantly’
When charges were announced in the case in last spring, Burnaby RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Mike Kalanj said children and adults were online “almost constantly” because of COVID-19 restrictions and pleaded with parents to have a talk with their kids about internet safety.
The 11-year-old in the case was lured on Snapchat, according to an agreed statement of facts presented in Vancouver provincial court.
She was first befriended on the social media app by a user she thought was a 14-year-old girl.
That user encouraged her to add another person to her account, someone she was told was an 18-year-old boy.
The victim told him she was 13.
He encouraged her to sneak out of her house that night, May 2, 2020, and come to his house to watch TV.
When she got into his car, however, she said she noticed he was older than she had been led to believe, and when they got to his Burnaby basement suite, he told her his TV wasn’t working.
Then he started taking off her sweater.
She said “No,” but he nonetheless proceeded to take off her sweater, shirt and pants.
He then directed her to perform sex acts with him, including oral sex and intercourse, some of which he filmed on his cell phone.
“(She) described it as physically hurting but not wanting to cry because she did not want him to get mad at her,” said Crown prosecutor Sunney Bains reading out the facts.
Bains also noted the girl had “observed a black handgun” while she was at the house.
The victim and her mother reported the assault to the Burnaby RCMP five days later.
An investigation linked both Snapchat accounts the girl had been communicating with to an IP address associated with Lowney’s basement suite.
And records provided by Snapchat showed both of the accounts had been accessed more than 40 times on May 2 when the girl was being lured, according to Bains.
Throughout that period, one account would log out and the other would log on within seconds, noted Bains.
A seven-second video of the girl performing oral sex on a man was also found on one of Lowney’s computers, and a swab of the girl’s bra tested positive for Lowney’s DNA.
‘This is the third child’
Bains called for a nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence for Lowney, noting it wasn’t the first time he’d sexually assaulted an underage girl.
In 2015, he pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual interference involving two different 15-year-old girls – at least one of whom he’d met online.
“This is the third child sexually assaulted by Mr. Lowney,” Bains said.
She also noted a doctor who prepared a psychiatric report had concluded Lowney was at high risk of committing similar offences involving underage girls in the future.
But defence lawyer Jeffrey Ray said Bains’ recommended sentence failed to give proper weight to Lowney’s early guilty plea, which had “saved the victim from testifying.”
Ray recommended a five-year prison term on top of the time Lowney has already spent behind bars.
‘It’s warranted’
In handing down his eight-year, two-month sentence, B.C. Provincial Court Judge David St. Pierre noted the punishment was a “step up” from the provincial jail term Lowney had gotten for his previous convictions.
“But it’s warranted,” he said.
Lowney has also been banned for 10 years from contact with kids under the age of 16 except with court approval, from working or volunteering with kids, and from going to places where children under the age of 16 might be expected to be, including public parks, swimming places, daycare centres, schools, playgrounds and community centres.
For 10 years, Lowney will also not be allowed to access or maintain personal profiles on any social media sites, social networks, internet discussion forums or chatrooms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat or other similar services, and he will not be allowed to have or access pornographic materials.
The Crown prosecutor in Lowney’s earlier sexual interference cases had called for similar bans in 2015, but B.C. Supreme Court Justice Brian Joyce decided there was no need.
“I am not satisfied that Mr. Lowney engaged in predatory conduct, and I am of the view that he will likely not re-offend,” Joyce wrote in his 2015 ruling. “I do not see the need for these restrictions.”
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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