Man arrested on child pornography charges at Sherwood Park dayhome

ALERT - A Sherwood Park man is facing child pornography-related charges after ALERT’s Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit arrested him this week at a residence out of which a dayhome was also operating.  On August 29, 2017, with the assistance of Strathcona County RCMP, ICE investigators executed a search warrant at a home in central Sherwood Park. There, they arrested Adam Downing, 32, and charged him with possessing child pornography and making child pornography available.  The suspect’s mother was operating a dayhome at the residence. No children were present when the search warrant was executed. Families of children who attended the dayhome were notified, and there is currently no evidence to suggest offences were committed against any of those children.  Investigators also believe the suspect worked as a camp counselor with junior and senior high school students this past summer at Camp Van-Es, located at South Cooking Lake, approximately 40 kilometres southeast of Edmonton.

This investigation began in late July when the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children passed on information about a social media user uploading child pornography to the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre in Ottawa, who subsequently referred the case to ICE.

Anyone with information about this investigation or any child exploitation offence is encouraged to contact local police or www.cybertip.ca.

According to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, parents should watch for the following behaviours in children as they may indicate distress and possible sexual abuse:
Displaying sexual knowledge and behaviour that is beyond his/her normal developmental stage.
Talking about sexual acts that s/he should not have knowledge or experience of.
Verbalizing what sexual contact looks like, sounds like, or feels like.
Repeatedly acting out sexually and not responding to limits placed on his/her behaviour (e.g. continues to fondle other children or adults after touching boundaries have been explained).
Behaviour that results in complaints from other children.
If your child is over the age of four and s/he does not have a good grasp of boundaries (e.g. tries to French kiss adults).

For more information on how to recognize possible signs of sexual abuse in children, visit www.protectchildren.ca.