Sex tourist Kenneth Robert Klassen appeals 11-year jail sentence

A lawyer for convicted sex tourist Kenneth Robert Klassen was in court Wednesday, seeking to reduce Klassen’s sentence of 11 years in jail.

Ian Donaldson argued that the sentence was too much for the 60-year-old Burnaby man, who was a first-time offender.

Donaldson told a three-member panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal that the sentencing judge, then-B.C. Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen, made four errors in principle.

Donaldson conceded that the crimes committed by Klassen were “sordid” and that his client was in some ways an unsympathetic character.

But he argued that Klassen’s guilty plea was not given the proper credit by Cullen, an argument that seemed to make little headway with the panel.

Justice Mary Newbury noted that there were many similar cases where the prosecution’s case was strong, making a guilty plea not that big a deal.

Donaldson also argued that there were other cases with even more serious circumstances involving violence.

And he noted that Klassen had spent six years on bail, complying with his conditions, which addresses whether he is an ongoing risk in the community.

“Eleven years is too much,” Donaldson concluded. “A fit sentence . . . would be seven years.”

But prosecutor Alexander Budlovsky argued that Cullen made no errors in handing out the longest sentence given in a sex-tourism case in Canada.

Budlovsky said Klassen’s moral blame-worthiness was very high and that he travelled to countries where he knew he would be able to exploit the vulnerability of young girls.

The victims suffered “irreparable psychological harm,” Budlovsky said, adding that sexually exploiting children was a crime of great violence.

“I say the sentence was anything but demonstrably unreasonable.”

The panel reserved judgment.

Case history

Klassen pleaded guilty to six counts of invitation to sexual touching involving girls under the age of 14 in Colombia, with the offences occurring between December 1998 and March 2002.

The international art dealer and divorced father of three also pleaded guilty to eight counts of invitation to sexual touching involving girls under the age of 14 in Cambodia in August 2001.

The case began when customs officials seized a suspicious package from the Philippines that Klassen had mailed to himself. The package contained commercial child pornography. When Klassen picked up the package in September 2004, he was arrested.

Police executed a search warrant at his home and at a storage locker in Vancouver and seized 21 DVDs containing more than 200 images of child pornography. The sex offences, which ranged from fondling to oral sex to intercourse, took place inside his Colombian home and at hotels.

Klassen’s was the third case of sex tourism in Canada and represented the longest jail term for the offence.

In 2005, Vancouver hotel worker Donald Bakker was the first Canadian convicted under the law, receiving a 10-year jail term for offences including sexual abuse of underage girls at a Cambodian brothel.

In November 2008, two Quebec aid workers pleaded guilty to sexually abusing teenage boys at a Haitian orphanage and received two- and three-year jail sentences.