Man pleads guilty to child porn rap; Ex-girlfriend speaks out about images
Author: Tracy McConkey
Web Site: Click here

A prominent Barrie businessman who tried to run for city councillor pleaded guilty to accessing child pornography yesterday after hearing how the woman he once loved turned him in.

Leslie Fox, 46, stood before the court in a suit and tie and politely said "guilty, your honour," after the Crown read in the details.

Court heard it was Fox's girlfriend, Patricia Archer, who went to police in October 2006 after she found hundreds of images on his computer of children as young as four being raped.

Archer told police she clicked on a file on Fox's bedroom computer because she thought it contained images of a recent Thanksgiving get-together, and was shocked at what she saw.

"Thousands of these images were popping up on the screen," said Crown Lorne McConnery.

Frightened, she quickly printed off some of the images and downloaded several more on to a disc before Fox came home. Then, she got her two young children out of the house and went to police.

Officers seized his computer and found 180 images of child pornography. A search of Fox's laptop, which he kept in the garage, turned up another 614 images. The Crown made a booklet of some of the images and presented them to Judge Rolland Harris, who flipped through them in court.

Outside of court, Archer trembled as she described her fear when she saw the "horrible" images on the computer.

"These were real children ... they had fear and desperation in their eyes," Archer said. "They were babies."

Archer said she had just moved in with Fox with her two children two weeks before and was helping him at the peak of his election campaign for city councillor. The larger-than-life photographs on his campaign posters were quickly taken down the day the news hit the headlines.

"He had aspirations to become mayor," she said. "I loved him, but I knew what I had to do. I had to go to police."

Fox, 46, manager of business and community relations for Park Place, formerly Molson Park in Barrie, will be sentenced April 18. In the meantime, his lawyer has submitted 30 letters from members of the community who wrote of Fox's good character. The Crown says he will ask for a six to nine month jail sentence.

Return to the top