BATTLEFORD — Saskatchewan’s highest court has upheld the convictions and 15-year prison sentence of a man who sexually assaulted two toddlers and recorded the crimes on his cellphone.
In a unanimous decision, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal rejected Joseph Sproull’s attempts to overturn his conviction and sentence. He was found guilty in Battleford Court of King’s Bench in November 2024 of eight criminal offences, including sexual assault, sexual interference, and making, possessing and distributing child pornography. He was sentenced in February 2025.
Sproull was arrested in 2021 after police discovered 488 images of child pornography on his cellphone. Among them were nine photographs taken inside his home depicting a man sexually assaulting two children, aged two and three.
At the time, Sproull was living in a home where his wife operated a day care. The trial judge dismissed the defence’s theory that an unknown intruder could have entered the home, assaulted the children, photographed the crimes using Sproull’s phone and then uploaded the images through his online accounts.
At Sproull's trial, his wife testified that the rug in one of the photos looked similar to one in the bathroom of their home, and she also recognized the floor mats in another photo as being similar to those in the children's playroom.
“It defies belief that someone other than Mr. Sproull could have viewed child pornography on his cellphone multiple times without his knowledge, let alone that someone had surreptitiously uploaded from his cellphone, using one of his online accounts, photographs that that person had taken of himself committing the two sexual assaults,” said Justice Neal W. Caldwell, with Chief Justice Robert W. Leurer and Justice Jillyne M. Drennan agreeing. “Nonetheless, the [trial] judge considered whether those scenarios were supported to any degree by the evidence, finding they were not."
Sproull’s lawyer appealed his convictions, arguing the trial judge failed to properly scrutinize the identification evidence and that the verdicts weren’t reasonable. The Court of Appeal rejected these arguments in its May 20 written decision.
Sproull’s lawyer also appealed the sentence, arguing that while the individual sentences for each offence weren’t unfit, the combined 15-year sentence was demonstrably too high under the legal principle of totality, which prevents sentences from being disproportionate.
The appeal court upheld the 15-year global prison sentence. The trial judge had initially calculated a cumulative sentence of 20 years but reduced it to 15 under the totality principle.
The Court of Appeal said that Parliament has mandated consecutive sentences for multiple sexual offences against children.
The trial judge described Sproull's actions in committing his offences as "monstrous behaviour."
“Sexual offences against children are among the most profoundly immoral acts an individual can commit,” said Justice Caldwell, quoting the Supreme Court of Canada.
-With files from Angela Brown
