See full judgment: Austlii.
The offender was sentenced following pleas of guilty to 1 count of using a carriage service for child-abuse material contrary to the Commonwealth Criminal Code, and 1 count of possessing or controlling child-abuse material obtained or accessed using a carriage service contrary to the Commonwealth Criminal Code.
Nature and Circumstances: Offender possessed 81 unique child abuse material files, 59 videos and 22 images. Actual children were involved in the creation of the material. The nature and content of the material, having regard to the age of the children and the gravity of the sexual activity depicted, is harrowing. The number of images and videos possessed and accessed is mercifully among the smaller end of the volume of images or videos the court observes. Offender’s moral culpability lies not in their sexual attraction to the children. Instead, offender was sentenced on the basis that they were so preoccupied with the titillating environment of the sexual conversation with an unknown person on the internet, that they were prepared to assume the risk and potential reward of viewing whatever images she was willing to send to you.
Rehabilitation: Offender enrolled voluntarily in a 15 session Coping with Child Exploitation Material Use (CEM-COPE) Program in late 2022, and completed this onerous program in early 2023. Program has assisted offender to recognise that their offending is not victimless. They are now insightful that they contributed to a deviant, disgusting market that exploits the suffering and sexual exploitation of children. Offender presented to psychologist as a partly rehabilitated, approval-seeking person with a history of low self-esteem, relationship difficulties, and a porn habit. Psychologist reports that offender has developing insight and a positive attitude towards behavioural charge. Offender expressed a strong sense of remorse for their conduct. There was a significant mitigation of penalty to reflect the fact that offender has undertaken an onerous rehabilitative course of their own volition. Given offender’s family support, their lack of prior criminal history, their commitment to the course and sustained involvement with a counsellor, their prospects for rehabilitation are good.
Offender sentenced to 9 months of imprisonment, to be released immediately on recongizance of $2,000 to be of good behaviour for 2 years. Offender also sentenced to a community corrections order for 2 years.
