The former regional director of B’nai Brith in Quebec, Bill Surkis, has pleaded guilty on two counts relating to the possession of child pornography. Surkis (R) is seen here leaving Montreal's Palais du Justice on Friday, May 29, 2009 with lawyer Steven Slimovitch.
Photograph by: Dave Sidaway, Gazette file
MONTREAL - A respected member of Montreal’s Jewish community and longtime educator at John Abbott College is to undergo a personality evaluation before lawyers discuss his sentence in the fall for child pornography crimes.
Bill Surkis, 70, will be back in court Sept. 27 after pleading guilty Wednesday to one count of possession of child pornography and another of accessing pornography on the Internet. A third count of distribution, which was added Wednesday, was also stayed.
In a brief hearing in Quebec Court at the Montreal courthouse, Crown prosecutor Cynthia Gyenizse read aloud a joint statement of fact, while Surkis, dressed in a suit, showed no emotion.
A woman who answered the phone at B’nai Brith, where Surkis was once regional director of Quebec, curtly distanced the organization from the situtation.
“He was neither employed nor involved with B’nai Brith during the entirety of the period covered by these allegations,” she said, reading from a prepared statement, which was attributed to no one in particular.
When asked when Surkis was regional director, the woman replied “we have no more comment.”
After buying a computer at a Best Buy store in June 2008, Surkis returned it a couple of weeks later, complaining it was running slowly.
While the technician was going through the hard drive, he discovered several videos and photos depicting young boys and girls engaged in sexual acts.
Police were called in and the computer was held until Surkis showed up several months later. Surkis, who was the academic dean of John Abbott College for 22 years, was charged last May, released on bail and ordered to obey several conditions.
He is prohibited from being in the presence of minors or in any park or playground where minors congregate, is forbidden from using his computer or any other equipment to access the Internet except for work purposes, and is barred from Internet cafés.
He was ordered to give up his passport and remain in Quebec unless given written permission by the prosecutor.
At the time of his arrest, his lawyer, Steven Slimovitch, said his client was downloading the videos to educated himself before giving public lectures on the issue of abuse on the Internet.
“In order to study the abuse problem, the root problem, you have to go in deeper and that’s what he was doing,” he said at the time.
Wednesday, Slimovitch refused to comment.
Surkis faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 days and a maximum sentence of five years in jail.
smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com
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