Island man pleads guilty to sharing intimate image with undercover cop posing as child

Warning: This story contains details some may find disturbing.

A man from Scotchfort, P.E.I., has pleaded guilty to two sexual offences after he sent a photo of his genitals to someone he believed was a 12-year-old girl — but was actually an undercover police officer.

Henry Donald Crabbe, 24, entered the pleas Tuesday morning in provincial court in Charlottetown before Judge Nancy Orr to both child luring and making sexually explicit material available to a child.

Court documents filed when Crabbe was charged in November say the incident happened in June 2024, and more details were revealed in an agreed statement of facts read in court on Tuesday.

Crown prosecutor John Diamond said the messages were sent over the Kik messaging app, where Crabbe had a pattern of sending unsolicited intimate images without knowing the other party or their age.

In the incident for which he was charged, Crabbe was using the app's random chat function to connect him to an unknown person. He greeted them, and then instructed them to touch his penis.

The person on the other end alerted Crabbe that they were only 12 years old, to which Crabbe said that was "fine" and proceeded to send a photo of his genitals and other sexually explicit messages.

But it was not a 12-year-old girl — it was an officer from the West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit in the United Kingdom. The message files were forwarded to Canada's National Child Exploitation Crime Centre, which then passed the case on to the P.E.I. RCMP.

In the months that followed, the IP address from which the messages were sent was connected to a residence where Crabbe was staying. Police also linked his profile photo on Kik — where he was using his first name — to his driver's licence.

In the case of both charges — luring a child and making sexually explicit images available to a child — the victim has to be under a certain age, or the perpetrator needs to believe they are.

Crabbe has no prior criminal record. In court Tuesday, his legal aid attorney, Connor Mullin, requested a pre-sentence report be completed before his sentence is handed down. 

Such a report is done by probation services and delves into the accused's personal history through a series of interviews with people who know or have encountered the offender, to give the judge a better understanding of the circumstances around the offence.

Orr also asked the Crown if he wanted to order a sexual deviancy assessment, but Diamond told the court the province's sole assessor is busy with other cases until at least May.

Crabbe will be sentenced March 5 in Charlottetown.