Sentencing continues today for a middle-aged predator who admitted to luring a 14-year-old teenaged girl into a sexual relationship.
Red Deer resident Earl Edward Egerdeen, 43, was scheduled to stand trial this week on charges including sex assault, sexual contact with a minor, luring a minor for sex, communicating with a minor for sex, making child pornography and accessing child pornography.
Represesented by defence counsel Denis Huot, Egerdeen pleaded guilty in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench on Monday to the charges of sexual contact, sexual communication and making child pornography.
The balance of the charges are to be withdrawn during the sentence hearing now underway before Justice Juliana Topolniski.
In court on Monday, special prosecutor Aurelie Beland of Calgary characterized Egerdeen as a predator who sought his victim on the Facebook social media website in the spring of 2011.
He used various techniques to gain the teen’s confidence and lure her into his house, where he forced himself upon her.
Beland included more than 3,000 text messages and described an exchange of sexually explicit photographs in 22-page statement of facts submitted to the court.
Court heard that Egerdeen brought the girl to his home six more times after their initial meeting. At one point, he introduced the girl to his landlord, saying that she was his niece. The girl had taken the bus for the first visit, meeting Egerdeen at a nearby gas station. She was driven to the house on some occasions by her mother, who was unaware of what was going on. Egerdeen had threatened the girl against telling her mother about their relationship, said Beland.
A school guidance counsellor alerted police that fall and Egerdeen was arrested and charged in March of 2012.
“(The victim) was a vulnerable person. She did not have many friends at school and had been a victim of bullying from other students,” said Beland.
Egerdeen paid no heed to the damage he did to her sexual integrity or her emotional well being, and put her at serious physical risk by having unprotected sex with her, she said.
In a joint submission with defence, Beland has asked Topolniski to consider a sentence of 7.5 years. She also asked that Egerdeen’s DNA be submitted to the national database and that he be placed for life on the National Sex Offenders Information Registry.
Huot said his only dispute with Beland’s submission is that his client wishes to serve his new sentence concurrently with the one he is already serving, rather than consecutively.
Egerdeen was sentenced to two years in June of 2013 for a 2007 offence, in which he broke into a home and made sexual advances toward the woman inside. He also has two previous convictions for sexual contact with children. One child was nine at the time and the other was 15.
Topolniski asked Beland and Huot to provide her with case law and arguments that will help her craft an appropriate sentence on the 2011 offences.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com