The sentence hearing for a South Surrey man who flip-flopped on a child-porn guilty plea has once again been set.
According to court records, Douglas Wayne Bowers is now scheduled to return to Surrey Provincial Court Aug. 30 and 31, as well as Sept. 5, for sentencing on charges of possessing and accessing child pornography.
The hearing gets underway nearly three years after Bowers was initially charged. That happened in September 2009, after an investigation by the RCMP's Integrated Child Exploitation Team led investigators to a man they called a “prolific distributor of child sexual abuse images and video online.”
Bowers, a carpenter, pleaded guilty to the possession charge shortly before a three-day trial was scheduled to begin Dec. 13, 2010. At the time, he told Peace Arch News he accidentally downloaded child porn while visiting adult-pornography websites, and that he was pleading guilty on the advice of his lawyer, who he later changed.
A sentencing hearing set at that time was postponed after Bowers objected to a pre-sentence report that said he deliberately downloaded the illegal porn. He applied to withdraw his guilty plea on March 21.
While that application was scheduled to be heard April 30, Bowers withdrew it instead, confirming to Judge Michael Hicks that his original guilty plea stands.
A date to confirm the sentencing hearing will go ahead is set for Aug. 10.