P.E.I. man sentenced to 4 years for sexual offences involving teen he met on Snapchat
CBC
Warning: This story contains details of sexual interference with an underaged person.
A 23-year-old Charlottetown man has been sentenced to four years in jail for several sexual offences involving a teenage girl.
Zachary Stephen MacNeill pleaded guilty in August to sexual interference with someone under the age of 16 years old, making an arrangement to commit an offence with someone under the age of 16, and making available explicit material to a child.
MacNeill met his young victim through Snapchat in 2024, and their interaction eventually became sexual. He was 22 at the time, and she was 14.
Crown prosecutor John Diamond said the case highlights growing concerns about how young people can be targeted through social media platforms.
“With the advent of… all of these social media platforms, people contact one another without actually having personal knowledge of who they're dealing with,” Diamond told CBC News after the sentencing hearing Monday.
“As the Supreme Court of Canada has indicated, it is a feeding ground for sexual predators to access young victims.”
The Crown said MacNeill arranged to meet the girl in a hotel room, sent her sexually explicit material and went to her school during lunch hour. This went on over a period of four months.
Early on, the court heard, MacNeill did not know the girl’s age. But when he did learn the truth, he did not end the interaction.
In January 2025, the victim's mother complained to Charlottetown Police Services. She had believed the two were no longer in contact but found that wasn't the case when she looked at her daughter's cellphone and iPad. The police investigation began in February 2025.
Diamond told the court this type of case is becoming increasingly common on P.E.I., pointing to a recent case in which another Charlottetown man was sentenced for using the social media platform TikTok to lure underage girls to his home and sexually assault one of them.
“It is shocking because of the number of cases we're seeing in our province,” he said.
Diamond said the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre helps the RCMP to reduce the vulnerability of children to internet-facilitated sexual exploitation, but more support and updated legislation are needed.
“There is policing going on, but we're so far behind in the court system and in parliament, catching up with the advent of the social media development and where things are going,” he said.
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