Guilty plea from local man in child luring case from 2024

By Medicine Hat News on January 17, 2025.

A Medicine Hat man will undergo assessment that could deem him a long-term or dangerous offender after he entered guilty pleas to having sexual contact with a child, luring a child under the age of 18 and failing to comply with court conditions placed on him for similar offences five years ago.

Austin Morgan Palmer, 25, was arrested in March 2024 by the Medicine Hat Police Service, and now will be assigned to the Southern Alberta Psychiatric Hospital until a sentencing hearing in Medicine Hat later this winter.

A long-term offender designation increases sentencing requirements to potentially include a higher level of police supervision for 10 years after a prison sentence is concluded or an indefinite period of incarceration.

Court of Justice in Medicine Hat heard on Thursday in an agreed statement of facts that over the course of two years, the 25-year-old man had unsupervised access to several minors in a local family.

Crown prosecutor Sasha Myers, of the province’s specialized prosecutions office, said that in itself contradicts conditions of a 2019 sentence for child luring.

During the recent time he touched a young male’s genitals at least twice and also solicited graphic pictures from a girl under 16.

Justice Catherine Regier said that the legal definition of harm extends to long-lasting emotional and psychological effects of sexual abuse.

She ordered that the report be compiled and presented to the Court by March 17.

Defence attorney Justin Dean took no position on the Crown’s request for the assessment.