Saskatoon man sentenced for luring child over Craigslist
A Saskatoon man who says he was trying to “educate” a 14-year-old girl he met through a Craigslist ad has been sentenced to 18 months in jail after pleading guilty to child luring.
“She sounded curious and I thought it would be safer if it was with me,” Gregory Howard Prescott told a police officer after he was arrested at the 8th Street Dairy Queen on April 2. That’s where police, who had been posing as the teen girl online, arranged to meet Prescott. Court heard the 66-year-old planned on bringing the girl back to his house for sex acts; he told police he thought it would be good for her because he was an older, gentle man who didn’t drink alcohol or take drugs.
It all started when Prescott posted a series of Craigslist ads in late March, looking for a “curious lolita”. The term means “underage” in child pornography rings, and it’s what alerted police to the ad according to Crown prosecutor Lana Morelli.
The undercover officer responded to the ad as a 14-year-old girl. Acknowledging that she was young, Prescott still sent her sexual messages calling her “baby girl”, asking for her breast size and describing himself as “very touchy-feely”.
The messages eventually got so graphic that even Prescott’s lawyer, Lisa Watson, said “to be frank, the content is disgusting.”