The mother of a young victim of sexual touching is outraged the perpetrator is out of prison just 10-and-a-half months after receiving a seven-year jail sentence.
The Progress has learned that at approximately 1 p.m. on Dec. 4, Corey Bryan James Neyrinck was released from jail with a plan to live in a halfway house in Surrey.
Neyrinck was sentenced on Jan. 19 in B.C. Supreme Court to seven years for sexually touching a person under 16; sexually touching a person under 14; and one count each of producing and possessing child pornography.
Because of delays caused by Neyrinck himself, which included firing or otherwise losing six lawyers, he spent 1,374 days in pre-trial custody before that January sentencing hearing. With the standard 1.5-to-one day of time served, he was given credit for 2,061 days leaving 16 months and seven days to serve.
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With statutory release, which means offenders are released after serving two thirds of a sentence, that brings Neyrinck to this week, a reality that was sprung on a victim’s mother just a day before he was released.
“I just feel I have been kept out of loop for so long,” she told The Progress Tuesday. “This horrendous thing happened to my family but I feel like a stranger not knowing anything until last minute. These victims are children and as their parents we need to keep them safe. How can we do that when we aren’t kept informed?”
Neyrinck’s case garnered broader attention when he was first charged back in 2014 because he is a one-time failed candidate for the Chilliwack school board, and once served as vice-president of the local District Parent Advisory Council.
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He received 54 votes in the 2013 trustee byelection won by Dan Coulter to replace Louise Piper who resigned for medical reasons.
Neyrinck was touching more than one girl for years until one victim finally told students at school about it, the court heard. He also watched pornographic videos with the girl that included child porn, and filmed some of his sexual touching.
On all his computers and electronic devices, Neyrinck was found with 2,326 images and 307 videos that met the legal definition of child pornography.
“He threatened her that if she told her mom he would punch her,” Crown counsel Paul Blessin told the court in January.
While he was out on bail at one point, Neyrinck breached conditions by contacting the victim’s mother, and even faking a lie detector test. He was also caught in an RV with internet access, a further breach.
That victim’s mother said she was told by a relative of Neyrinck’s on Tuesday that he already has a phone and he has zero conditions on his internet access.
“He’s a dangerous man,” she said. “We have not seen the last of him. They are giving him too much freedom.”
The Progress was unable to confirm his release conditions, but one unusual element of his sentencing was, despite the fact that he was in Supreme Court, he had spent so much time in pre-trial custody that he was left with a provincial (under two years) sentence rather than a federal one. And because federal sentences cannot be accompanied by probation after the time in custody, this led Justice Paul Riley to ask if probation had been considered. Crown and defence said it had not.
“I do have a concern about imposing a sentence that just ends with no supervision after,” Riley said.
In the end, Riley did hand down a one-year probation order including a no-contact order, a ban on attending places where children under 16 might be, and use of internet capable devices only with permission from a probation officer.
This sentence read in court differs from what the victim’s mother said she was told this week regarding Neyrinck’s access to the internet, and his supervision by the courts.
He also does have to register as a sex offender for life.
“I’m sorry and I want to apologize for my actions,” Neyrinck said at the sentencing in January. “I realize what I’ve put everyone through must have been excruciating.
“I believe everybody has the right to feel angry.”
• READ MORE: Chilliwack child sex offender delays his sentencing hearing
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