Ex-Canadian officer gets 10-plus years in Pa. sex case

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A former Canadian police officer who traveled to western Pennsylvania after expressing his desire in an online fetish chat room to experience the “gift of a 14-year-old’s virginity” was sentenced to 10 1/2 years in federal prison in an online teen sex sting.

Paul Maher, 60, of Richmond, Ontario, plans to petition the Canadian government to allow him to serve most of his jail time there after a federal judge in Pittsburgh imposed the sentence today, according to his federal public defender, Thomas Livingston.

Maher pleaded guilty in October to two counts, traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, and coercion and enticement of a person he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. He faced a mandatory minimum 10-year sentence and could have received up to 11 years and three months in prison under sentencing guidelines.

Maher will get credit for being incarcerated since his arrest on June 27, 2008, after he traveled nearly 600 miles to a Westmoreland County motel but didn’t go through with a meeting he had arranged with the “teen,“ who was actually an undercover police officer from Mount Pleasant, a borough about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

“Your criminal conduct in this case was depraved and vile,” U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry said before sentencing Maher, who opted not to address the judge. “You are without doubt a sexual predator."