Former Ottawa officer sentenced to 10 years
Posted Mar 8, 2011 02:39:49 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A former Ottawa police officer arrested in an online sex sting in Pennsylvania last year has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Sixty-year-old Paul Maher pleaded guilty in October to traveling with intent to engage in illicit sex, coercion and enticement of a person he thought was a 14-year-old girl. In reality, Maher was chatting with an undercover FBI agent.
A 14-year-veteran of the force, serving from 1974 to 1988, Maher was working for Health Canada at the time of his arrest on June 30th, 2008.
Maher was arrested in New York after driving almost 1000 kilometres from the home he shared with his wife in Richmond to Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, a suburb just outside of Pittsburgh, where he planned to have sex with who he thought was 14-year-old girl he had been chatting with online for nine months.
He didn’t go through with the meeting when he spotted police surveillance teams around the motel he had booked. Instead, Maher took off for the neighbouring state where officers caught up with him three days later. Officers say Maher sent 220 pictures and 37 videos to the undercover cop depicting graphic sex acts with underage children.
A Canada-wide warrant was issued for his arrest soon after a parallel Ottawa Police investigation resulted in charges of child luring, child pornography and weapons offences.
Maher’s lawyer says his client plans to petition the federal government to allow him to serve most of his jail time in Canada.
