Agnew refers to the victim only as "AB" in his decision because her identity is protected under Canadian law.
At the birthday party, Mendoza secretly searched through AB’s things and took pictures of her ID and contact information from her notebook.
He then started messaging her using a fake identity — Chris Lander, a 30-year-old from Edmonton — and a private number.
"He persuaded her to take nude images of herself and email them to him and instructed her to delete everything so there would be no trace left. During the course of these interactions, AB told 'Chris' that she was 14, and that she was a 'cutter,' and showed him her scars," Agnew wrote.
Within a month, Mendoza had convinced the girl to have sex with him on camera.
"AB was at the time a virgin, and the accused promised to pay her to allow him to have intercourse and to video it."
On Oct. 26, 2022, Mendoza rented an Airbnb in Saskatoon under a false name for their meeting.
Agnew's decision said in order to make sure she wasn’t followed, Mendoza made her stop at a number of decoy addresses before sharing his real location and had her wait at a street corner.
“Once at the apartment, still without having ever seen the accused, she was instructed to put on a set of goggles left there, which completely obstructed her vision,” Agnew said.
“They performed oral sex on each other, and penetrative vaginal sex without the accused using a condom.”
Mendoza kept in contact after the meeting, still using his false "Chris Lander" identity, and tried scheduling another paid sexual encounter for December 2022.
According to Agnew's decision, Mendoza even went as far as to track the girl’s periods, "specifically so that he could ejaculate inside her without a condom and in the hope of not making her pregnant."
Before Mendoza was able to manipulate the girl into a second meeting, a counsellor at AB’s school found out what was going on and told the girl’s mother, who went straight to the police.
Investigators found the message history on Mendoza’s phone, along with 110 photos and 43 videos of child sexual abuse, 42 of which were AB, Agnew says.
Mendoza pleaded guilty to his charges.
In determining Mendoza's sentence, the judge weighed the aggravating and mitigating factors.
Agnew pointed out the intricate planning Mendoza undertook to commit his assault — the false identity, the decoy stops along the way to their meeting and the blackout goggles.
The fact that there were more than 700 texts exchanged between the two during the course of their three-month communication points to the intensity of his grooming, Agnew said.
Agnew was also troubled by the way Mendoza’s lawyer described the exchange as a "unique relationship that unfolded over time."
"(Mendonza's) belief that this was a 'relationship,' let alone an appropriate one which should mitigate his culpability, raises significant concerns about his risk to re-offend," Agnew wrote.
