A man who allegedly went looking for an underage sexual relationship and used a Burnaby restaurant as meeting place is behind bars following his arrest.
Ronald Gardner, 56, of no fixed address, is facing two charges including making child pornography and arrangement or agreement to commit a sexual offence against a child.
The investigation by the B.C. Integrated Child Exploitation (B.C. ICE) Unit began in February when an online investigator, posing as a single mother of two children, entered an online chat website known for being used by people to discuss sexual interests in children.
The investigator began communicating with a user and the chat quickly turned sexual in nature. The suspect allegedly described various sexual acts he wished to engage in with the investigator’s fictitious children, according to police.
On March 10, police said the suspect, while under surveillance by the province’s Integrated Sexual Predator Observation Team, went to a Burnaby restaurant, to allegedly meet with the mother and engage in sexual acts with the daughter. The police did not identify the specific restaurant.
Instead, Gardner was arrested and granted bail on March 18 with a number of conditions restricting his access to children, computer devices and the internet.
But a couple weeks later, on April 4, he was arrested by Abbotsford police using the internet. He has remained in custody since while the investigation continued.
“Keeping children safe from predators is the primary focus of the B.C. ICE unit,” said RCMP Insp. Tyler Svendson, officer in charge of the RCMP’s Behavioural Sciences Group, in a statement. “Specially trained on-line undercover investigators locate offenders in child exploitation-focused chat forums, where they are known to converse with like-minded individuals.”
