Bishop has travelled in Southeast Asia
Itinerary may be a factor when customs officials check tourists
By STEPHEN MAHER Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA - Bishop Raymond Lahey, who has been charged with possessing
child pornography, has travelled to Thailand, a spokeswoman for
the church said on Wednesday.
"It was no secret that he travelled to Southeast Asia in
the past," said Marilyn Sweet, communications officer for
the archdiocese of Halifax. "I don't know how many times
but I certainly know that he had travelled in Southeast Asia."
In a column at halifaxnewsnet.ca this week, radio host Rick Howe
wrote that the bishop's history of travel to sex tourism destinations
such as Thailand and Cambodia explained why border officials searched
the bishop's computer at Ottawa International Airport on Sept.
15.
Officials from the Canada Border Services Agency found "images
of concern" on his laptop. In a later forensic analysis,
investigators found images they allege to be child pornography
and issued a Canada-wide arrest warrant for the bishop, at which
point he resigned.
In an email exchange on Wednesday, Mr. Howe said he does have
a source for his assertion, but he can't reveal it.
"For all I know, Lahey might have had legitimate church
business on his travels, but where he went red-flagged him for
a check and that was his undoing," he said.
Police, government officials and church spokespeople have declined
to reveal where the bishop was coming from when his laptop was
seized on Sept. 15.
His secretary at the Antigonish diocese, Cathy Martin, doesn't
know.
"The bishop took care of his own travel arrangements so
far as I knew," she said Wednesday.
She would not say how long he was out of the country, referring
that question to Rev. Paul Abbass in Antigonish and Ms. Sweet
in Halifax. Father Abbass did not respond to an email request.
Ms. Sweet said the church is not answering questions for the bishop.
Bishop Lahey's Ottawa lawyer, Michael Edelson, does not respond
to media requests.
The Privacy Act prevents the Canada Border Services Agency from
saying where Bishop Lahey was coming from on Sept. 15, or why
agents decided to search his computer.
"It could be any number of things, in terms of behaviour
the person exhibits, or anything else they see based on what comes
up on the databases that we have access to that record information
about that individual," said Chris Kealey.
A former police officer who worked in a child porn unit, who
spoke on condition of anonymity, said it seems likely that there
was some reason for the agents to check the bishop's computer,
but Canada does not have high-tech watch lists at the border to
flag suspected child porn importers.
"There's only one deduction left to make," he said.
"This guy gets off the plane. They're waiting for him. What
happened? He's on somebody's radar, but whose? Who knows?"
Julian Sher, author of One Child at a Time, about the hunt
for child pornographers, said that it seems likely there was some
reason for the laptop check.
"I do know that it's extremely rare that they check for
contents of computers. It could be random, but more than likely
there was some kind of trigger. The question is, if there was
some kind of trigger, what was the trigger. The individual or
the travel path?"
Mr. Sher said Canada has failed to take aggressive measures
to track down Canadians who sexually exploit children overseas,
or get tough in sentencing.
"In one huge case where the Canadians led a huge investigation
that led to a big international ring being busted, a lot of the
Americans got five or 10 years, some of the Canadians heavily
involved got 14 days to be served on weekends," he said.
"It's a joke."
And the fight against child porn is important, he said, because
it is so often a marker of child abuse.
One study in the American prison system found 85 per cent
of men convicted of possessing child porn admitted to having sexually
assaulted children, he said.
