A former Merritt radio personality will go to jail for nine months and be forbidden from being around children for five years after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography and voyeurism.

Jamie McDerment, a small and slightly built 24-year-old man, was led away in handcuffs by two sheriffs Friday afternoon after being sentenced in provincial court.

At the end of Judge Stephen Harrison’s sentencing, McDerment began to quietly weep. Before being led away he burst into tears, turned and walked over to the gallery, momentarily hugging his mother in the front row.

RCMP were alerted this year by American authorities who suspected McDerment of accessing child porn on the Internet. When police raided his house, they found more than 100 images as well as videos on a computer and mobile devices of children engaged in sex among themselves and with adults.

“They are acts of a horrendous nature, acts from which Mr. McDerment took sexual stimulation,” Harrison said.

The provincial court judge agreed with a joint submission by the defence and Crown, who called for nine months of jail followed by probation.

McDerment has no criminal record, co-operated with police and entered an early guilty plea. But Harrison said it is particularly disturbing that police also found covert images he admitted to taking of young boys partially naked in a bathroom at Riverside park in August.

While child pornography is “passive,” Harrison argued, voyeurism “is a real act in a real world, not a virtual world.”

McDerment is the father of an infant daughter, but he will face severe restrictions in being around her or any child or youth for at least five years.

Harrison placed a condition that McDerment not be in the presence of anyone under 16 for a period of five years, unless with the consent of a probation officer and with another adult.

The court heard evidence that his wife had no idea of his activities and left him as a result. McDerment also breached a court order by calling her frequently at her home in Clinton.

Psychiatric reports prepared for sentencing showed McDerment has a lack of insight into his actions and a narcissistic personality, “features one tends to see with psychopathic disorders,” Harrison said.

Those traits may hinder his rehabilitation.

As part of his two-year probation, the sex offender must report to probation offices, take counseling as directed and cannot contact his wife and daughter, unless she requests it.

He also can’t be within 100 metres of his wife, daughter or any school, playground or place where children might be expected to attend. McDerment is also banned during the probation from possessing a camera or any device that can access the Internet.

cfortems@kamloopsnews.ca