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Ontario school bus driver
convicted in sickening child -porn
case
JANE SIMS Updated: June 5, 2018
Editor's name: This story containsgraphic details
from Mondays court proceedings.
His online nickname was "Steps," like the bus steps his victims had to walk up
every day he picked them up for school.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-n ews/cou rt- hea rs-of-school-bus-d rivers -chi Id- porn-perve rsion/wcm/2138a882-7e57-4ead-a247-Oa8bOd5bbad b
6/6/2018 Ontario school bus driver convicted in sickening child -porn case I Ottawa Citizen
Monday morning, a London courtroom heard how Steps, the dark-haired man
wearing a black T-shirt in the prisoner's box, had committed some of the most
depraved crimes ever described there.
The kids on the bus didn't know they shouldn't have accepted treats or hand
lotion from the man entrusted with their safe trips to and from school.
They didn't know he had laced the food with his own semen or that the
cellphone videos he took of them eating the treats would be uploaded onto the
dark web, on a child porn message board.
Steps is 30. He's non-descript with dark hair. His father was in the courtroom to
support him.
The only word Steps uttered was "guilty" after his defence lawyer waived the
reading of his 23 charges that included three counts of voyeurism, one count of
possessing child pornography, one count of distributing child pornography and
18 counts of making child pornography.
As part of the plea deal, the charges had been reduced from the 78 original
counts.
The agreed statement of facts was filed to Ontario Court Justice Allan Maclure
and made an exhibit without being read aloud. Within those pages were
disgusting details.
Steps has no prior relevant criminal involvement. He worked as a school bus
driver for a London bus company and drove an elementary school route.
A publication ban was placed on anything that could identify the child victims.
Their families know. The London police organized a community meeting at the
school to help identify the kids in the videos and explain the court process.
The investigation revealed that 39 children were exposed to Steps' crimes. All
of them had to be tested for sexually -transmitted diseases. All the tests came
back negative.
The first hints of his perversion were picked up by a corporal with the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police who was investigating TOR users of a dark web site
called MagicKingdom.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-n ews/cou rt- hea rs-of-school-bus-d rivers -chi Id- porn-perve rsion/wcm/2138a882-7e57-4ead-a247-Oa8bOd5bbad b
6/6/2018 Ontario school bus driver convicted in sickening child -porn case I Ottawa Citizen
TOR, a computer network, allows users to conceal their identities and
activities, by separating user identification and the routing of files. The website,
MagicKingdom, is known as a forum for child exploitation.
Officers found four files uploaded to the website in which a man would
masturbate on food, then feed the food to children on a bus and have
conversations with them about it.
The RCMP began to search for where the videos originated. More files were
found. One of them showed a little girl sleeping on the bus. The man's camera
pans up and down her body and focuses on her buttocks.
After they discovered the videographer used the nickname Steps, the RCMP
found 24 more of his videos on another dark web site called Child's Play. Many
of them documented the same perverted routine with food.
Some of the videos showed Steps masturbating on the bus while children can
be heard in the background.
The RCMP were able to narrow the location of the videos to the London region
and sent some of the digital files to London police. Local officers were able to
pick out landmarks in the videos and determined the school.
The bus company was able to give police the name of the driver. Ontario's
transportation ministry provided his address.
On July 25, 2017, with search warrant in hand, police went to Steps' home and
told him he was under arrest. Steps pulled out a large folding knife and held it
to his own neck.
"Just kill me," he told them, in the agreed facts presented to the court.
Police managed to take him into custody without harm to himself or an officer.
A search of the bus driver's electronic devices showed he had 884 child -
exploitive videos and images. Of the 884 files, he had created 176 of them on
the school bus.
Items in the house and on the bus were tested for DNA. A comparison
concluded the chances the DNA belonged to anyone other than Steps were
one in 210 quadrillion. (There are seven billion people in the world.)
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-n ews/cou rt- hea rs-of-school-bus-d rivers -chi Id-porn-perve rsion/wcm/2138a882-7e57-4ead-a247-Oa8bOd5bbad b
6/6/2018 Ontario school bus driver convicted in sickening child -porn case I Ottawa Citizen
Steps confessed during his police interview that he took the videos during the
2015-2016 school year.
A pre -sentence report was ordered, with Steps to be sentenced July 24.
jsims@postmedia.com (mailto:jsims@postmedia.com)
twitter.com/JaneatLFPress (https://twitter.com/JaneatLFPress)
CHILD PORNOGRAPHY (HTTP://OTTAWACITIZEN.COM/TAG/CHILD-PORNOGRAPHY)
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6/6/2018 Ontario school bus driver convicted in sickening child -porn case I Ottawa Citizen
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