Edmonton man sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for child porn, luring

Edmonton resident Chase Phillipe Viau has been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison after pleading guilty to six counts of child porn and other minor-related charges.

He pleaded guilty by an Agreed Statement of Facts, submitted by his counsel on September 6, 2022 on the first day of what was scheduled to be a four-week trial. 

Viau was found guilty of possession of child porn between September 1 2020 and March 3 2021, as well as: luring, “communicating with a person who he believed was under 16 for the purpose of facilitating an offence;” sexual interference, “making sexually explicit material available to a person under 16 for the purpose of communicating with that person to facilitate a sexual offence;” and breach of a no-contact condition. 

“At a time when Mr. Viau had finished a custodial sentence for a sexual interference conviction and was still bound by a probation order, he started communicating with the complainant by Snapchat,” the legal document states. “She was then 14 and he was 22.”

“The relationship progressed to in-person meetings and sexual activities proposed by Mr. Viau, including unprotected penile-vaginal and penile-oral sex,” it states.  Between September 2020 and February 2021, there were an estimated twenty such encounters, together with nude photos sent by the complainant to Mr. Viau at his request.” 

It was the complainant’s mother who discovered the messages and contacted the police in December 2020 — but it did not immediately end the relationship. 

“Their investigation then involved setting up an undercover persona of a 14-year-old girl and contacting Mr. Viau through his Snapchat handle,” the document continues. “He acknowledged that he knew that 16 was the age of consent.”

Viau was arrested and released on bail, when he contacted the minor again, in breach of a court condition not to do so.

He “requested that they meet for sex. Though that did not happen, videos of the complainant that meet the definition of child pornography were found on his phone.” 

Viau’s sentencing hearing was not until September 5, 2023, with the delay being attributed to waiting on the accused to enter pleas from another indictment, one with 16 counts of similar charges from the same period of time. 

From that indictment, Viau pleaded guilty to two charges of luring, one with someone under the age of 18, one under the age of 16. 

In total it has been confirmed Viau “corresponded with six different girls, all of whom told him they were between the ages of 14 and 16.”

He would offer them money, marijuana or alcohol “in exchange for sex or nude photos,” and communications would be “varying duration and lengths” — with the most recent communication “over a considerable period,” racking up 822 printed pages worth of messages. 

Viau, now 25 years old, was adopted as an infant into a middle-class family with no history of abuse. 

Viau’s adoptive parents, who attended the hearing and continue to offer their support, said they had “difficulty with him throughout his youth,” as he was hyperactive and compulsive, suffering from ADHD and Tourette’s syndrome. 

He has worked part-time at a golf course and worked in baggage handling at the airport, but has not been offered a full-time position “because of his poor work habits.”

Viau took “responsibility for his actions and acknowledged that they were wrong, though he cannot explain why he re-offended after his first conviction.”