Home detention for child abuse collection

11 February 2016

A West Coast man was sentenced (10 Feb) to eight months’ home detention in the Greymouth District Court for possessing child sex abuse pictures.

The 27-year-old unemployed man had earlier pleaded guilty to possessing objectionable publications – 250 computer image files depicting the sexual abuse of children aged from about six months through to early teenage years.

Judge Gary MacAskill refused the man’s application for name suppression and directed that he have no devices capable of accessing the Internet, no unsupervised access to children and that he attend a psychological assessment.

An Internal Affairs inspector tracked the man to a West Coast address after a tipoff from Microsoft Hotmail and the United States’ National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Mobile phones, a laptop computer, digital cameras, CDs and DVDs were seized from the man's address.

Internal Affairs Community Safety Manager, Steve O’Brien, said there is a global community, including Internal Affairs, combatting the child sexual abuse trade.

“It’s only a matter of time before people indulging in this activity get caught,” Steve O’Brien said. “People, who think they’re safe in the confines of their own home, indulging in viewing or distributing objectionable material on the Internet, should think again. Downloading this material perpetuates this nasty industry by feeding a market that results in crimes being committed against young children.”

Media contact:
Steve O’Brien, Manager Community Safety, Department of Internal Affairs
Phone 027 220 5899