A Burnaby man will spend the next six years and one month in prison after admitting to sex crimes against a girl he met through an online "furry" community when she was 12 years old.
It’s the second time Adam Woolacott, 41, was due for sentencing after a warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to show up in Vancouver Provincial Court in March. He has been in custody since.
Woolacott, who had been out on bail since April 2023, pleaded guilty in September 2024 to sexual interference, arranging a sexual offence against a child, and making sexually explicit material available to someone under 16.
“Mr. Woolacott knew what he was doing and intended to do was illegal,” Judge Donna Senniw said as she sentenced him April 29. “His moral blameworthiness is high.”
She said he was aware of her age from the start.
In a victim impact statement, Senniw said the child has suffered deep depression, self-harm and attempted suicides as a result of the situation.
“She said he was the reason other men exploited her and had been abused, used and groomed,” Senniw said.
“She said he took her childhood away, he robbed her of what could have been,” the judge said.
Woolacott met the victim, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, through a furries-oriented Facebook group in December 2019 when she was 12 and he was 35, according to an agreed statement of facts presented in court.
Furries are people who create anthropomorphized animal characters or "fursonas," with whom they identify.
Some furries wear costumes or "fursuits" or paraphernalia such as animal ears or tails, or represent themselves as anthropomorphic animals in online communities.
The girl direct-messaged Woolacott in December 2019 because she liked the furry grey and purple bunny head in his profile photo, according to the agreed statement, and the messages quickly became sexual.
The online contact led to five in-person encounters, three at Burnaby parks, one at the North Burnaby townhouse Woolacott shared with his mother and one at the VancouFur convention in Surrey in March 2022, where the girl told organizers a man had touched her sexually in his hotel room.
Senniw said the pair had exchanged some 12,000 text messages.
The judge said he had sent the girl pornographic images, including some of cartoon characters having sex.
Woolacott pleaded guilty after an application to exclude critical evidence, including the thousands of text messages as well as security video, was dismissed.
At a hearing in January, Crown prosecutor Jacinta Lawton said Woolacott should be sentenced to between eight and nine years in prison for his crimes.
Defence lawyer Allen Goldin argued a sentence between four and five years was more appropriate.
The judge said a writer of a report for sentencing found Woolacott “regrets his behaviour and always will.”
With files from Cornelia Naylor
