A former Victoria nurse who fled Canada to avoid child pornography charges has been sentenced to two years in jail.
David Robert Stallcup, who assumed a fake identity in Victoria to evade unrelated charges in the U.S., pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography.
In giving his decision on Thursday, provincial court Judge Adrian Brooks said it’s important to consider the serious harm done to the children in the tens of thousands of images and hundreds of videos Stallcup had in his possession. The children ranged from infants to pre-teens, forced into horrific sex acts or sexually explicit poses.
“When we think about what is done to them in these pictures … one sees the importance, and indeed the necessity, of the courts to do everything they can to wipe out this disgusting business,” Brooks said.
Stallcup will get 10 months of credit for time served in jail both in the U.S. while he was awaiting extradition and in Canada awaiting trial.
Stallcup, wearing a red prison-issue T-shirt and pants, addressed the court before Brooks issued the sentence.
Speaking quietly from the prisoner’s box, he stood up and said: “Your honour, I would like to apologize for my actions. I understand that things are done to children in these images, and it’s morally wrong and disgusting.”
Crown prosecutor Clare Jennings called for 18 to 24 months in jail, partly to ensure Stallcup can participate in a sex-offender rehabilitation program in jail.
Defence lawyer Ryan Drury asked for a sentence of 12 months.
Jennings expressed concern that Stallcup denies having a sexual interest in children, even as he admitted to getting sexual gratification from child pornography.
“He wishes he was a person who was not sexually interested. But he clearly is, otherwise he would not have those images,” Jennings said.
Brooks took into account a psychiatric assessment that found Stallcup poses a low to moderate risk of reoffending and has a prospect of being rehabilitated.
Watching the sentencing proceedings on Thursday was Victoria police Internet child exploitation investigator Det. Const. Mark MacPhail, who tracked down Stallcup in March 2015 after seeing a Victoria IP address sharing child pornography. MacPhail previously told the Times Colonist the images were the most disturbing he had seen in his career.
Stallcup, who went by the alias David Robert while in Victoria, worked as a nurse at Royal Jubilee Hospital. He worked with adults in that role and there’s no indication he used his position to abuse children.
His Fisgard Street apartment was searched by Victoria police on March 10, 2015. Officers seized a computer, hard drives and DVDs that contained 775 videos totalling 139 hours and more than 27,000 images of child pornography.
While the search unfolded, investigators asked the man they knew as David Robert to wait at a nearby coffee shop. Instead, Stallcup fled and crossed the border to the U.S.
In April 2015, Stallcup was arrested in Oregon, where there was an outstanding warrant accusing him of using someone else’s name to apply for a passport in 1998, and of attempting to avoid burglary and aggravated car theft charges in Colorado. He was sentenced to a year and seven months in jail.
Victoria police found forged identity documents in Stallcup’s apartment and determined who he was. Investigators learned he had been arrested in Oregon and, once his sentence there was over, he was extradited to Canada on Nov. 16, 2016.
Drury said that after his sentence, Stallcup plans to return to California and live with his sister.
