There’s something deeply wrong when the highest court in Canada shows more concern for a hypothetical teenager than for the real children who were actually victimized.

Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the one-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession and access to child pornography. The decision came in a case involving two men in Quebec who pleaded guilty to possessing more than a thousand images and videos of children — some as young as three — being sexually abused. Instead of focusing on those facts, the majority of judges centred their reasoning on an imaginary scenario about an 18-year-old who received a photo of a 17-year-old through sexting. That hypothetical became the foundation for overturning a law meant to protect children from predators.

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