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Candles of remembrance Renee and Erika Arnouse take part in the annual candlelight vigil, United Against Violence Against Women, held Thursday evening at the Salmon Arm campus of Okanagan College. The event was sponsored by the SAFE Society, Okanagan College Students’ Union and Okanagan College Aboriginal Services. While the event originated out of the horrific murder of women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, this year’s ceremony also recognized the missing and murdered women who have disappeared along B.C.’s Highway of Tears.
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Man guilty of distributing child porn
Court ruling: Judge issues minimum sentence of 90-days jail time to be served on weekends. By Tracy Hughes OBSeRVeR STAFF
A former resident of Salmon Arm will serve the minimum sentence of 90 days in jail on weekends for a charge of importing and distributing child pornography. Bruce Darcy Abar, 52, a former Salmon Arm restaurant owner who has now moved to another unnamed small town in the B.c. Interior, was sentenced to the jail time plus one year probation.
charges were laid after an investigation by the RcMP’s Internet child exploitation unit in Saskatchewan discovered evidence of him sharing pornographic images and videos of prepubescent and teenaged boys. Four computers and a collection of cDs were seized from Abar’s Salmon Arm home on April 26, 2011. Abar’s collection included more than a thousand images and videos, which he viewed and then
allowed other computer users to access by providing the password to a file-sharing application. More than 200 people gained access to the files. Abar was not involved in producing any of the material and a psychologist who examined him determined he was not a pedophile and called him a “nilto-negligible risk for the sexual abuse of children.” While crown counsel Angela Ross was asking for a nine- to 12-
This week Take a look back at the 100year history of the Salmon Arm Fire Department on page A8. The SilverBacks hope to improve their results when they face Vernon Saturday. See A17.
month jail sentence, his defence lawyer Glenn Verdurmen said the offence was out of character for a man with no prior criminal record and that his life has been dramatically altered as a result of the public shame. Once the charges were revealed, Abar was forced to give up his franchise restaurant business. Provincial court Justice Roy Dickey noted Abar’s guilty plea as a mitigating factor in sentenc-
ing, as well as his remorse and willingness to attend counselling. In addition to the intermittent jail time at the Kamloops Regional correctional centre and probation, Abar is banned from possessing pornographic material, may not enter areas of the Internet where the topic is pornography and forfeited all the seized computer equipment. He is also required to supply a DnA sample to the criminal database.
Index Opinion ....................... A6 View Point .................. A7 Life & Times ............... A8 Sports................A17-A21 Arts & Events ... A22-A25 Time Out................... A26 Vol. 106, No. 50, 44 pages