A man who has worked coaching children at a local ski club has been charged with possessing and distributing child pornography.
Marlowe Northcott, 31, was charged with the offences Aug. 1, after he allegedly downloaded child pornography over a computer file-sharing network in July and made those files available for others to upload.
None of the charges have been proven in court.
According to information contained in a police search warrant application, authorities were alerted this summer after an investigator monitoring file-sharing networks for child pornography noted the Internet provider address of someone who had downloaded 25 suspicious files.
Police investigators examined the files and determined the majority were child pornography, including depictions of sexual acts between children under 10 years old and between adults and pre-pubescent children.
Police got a court order to trace the IP address to an account held by Northcott at his home in North Vancouver.
On July 31, they executed a search warrant at his home, seizing his computer.
According to information contained in the search warrant application, Northcott had a web page and was active on various publicly viewable social media accounts, describing himself on one of them as being “fond of cycling, skiing, biking and most everything else outdoorsy. I have also been known to do clever things with my computer.”
Information online described Northcott’s involvement in running bike camps for children and his coaching of kids aged six to 12 for the Mount Seymour Ski Club. Those accounts have now been taken down.
Contacted by the North Shore News, Rob Terry, president of the ski club, said he wasn’t aware of the charges until contacted by the newspaper. “Obviously we’re quite concerned about this whole thing.”
Northcott has been released on bail conditions that ban him from having contact with anyone under age 16 or being around any recreation centre where children 16 or younger are likely to be. Northcott is also banned from accessing the Internet, except for work purposes, under his bail conditions.
Northcott’s defence lawyer did not return phone calls.
Northcott has not yet made a first appearance in court or entered a plea to the charges.
