No jail term for child porn offender
A Whangarei man who had thousands of images of child pornography, including of a three-year-old girl being raped, will not go to jail.
Callum Moates, 41, appeared for sentence in the Whangarei District Court this week after earlier pleading guilty to 20 charges of possessing objectionable material.
The charges were representative. Fifteen files containing images and five with videos were analysed from thousands contained on computers, hard drives and disks found at his home in December 2008. The search came after an international investigation identified a number of New Zealanders accessing child porn websites.
Judge Simon Maude said the images found in Moates' possession ranged from category one, the least offensive, to category four, the second-most offensive, with one file showing a three-year-old girl being raped.
Judge Maude said the probation officer who interviewed Moates found that while he had no previous convictions, he was at a high risk of reoffending, especially if he was not given intensive supervision and counselling.
But the judge said Moates' father, who described his son as a bit of a loner, was willing to have him serve home detention at his home. He said the father did not condone Moates' offending, but wanted to help him and was willing to provide a place for him to do home detention, if the court sentenced him to that.
Judge Maude said Moates had referred himself for counselling at the Miriam Centre so was taking steps to address his issues.
He said this was not a victimless crime. The young children abused for the images and videos were the victims  and Moates needed to be held accountable for his actions. There was also the need to denounce the behaviour and deter others  but he also had to consider rehabilitation.
Judge Maude said there were a number of aggravating factors involved, including the creation of the market for the type of material, the level of cruelty involved in the exploitation of the children, the vulnerability of the victims, the fact it was premeditated offending, the large number of files involved - 4170 - and the age of the children.
In mitigation was Moates' early guilty plea, his enrolment in counselling and the lack of any previous convictions.
 "It is a heinous crime and the people accessing the internet and downloading this create the market for this terrible exploitation of young children," Judge Maude said.
"It is being taken extremely seriously by the court."
He said an appropriate starting point was two years and three months' jail, from which he deducted a third  for the early guilty plea, which left 18 months' jail.
"The question then becomes a matter of do I convert it to home detention or imprisonment?" he said.
Judge Maude said home detention was appropriate if it was coupled with intensive supervision and conditions.
He gave Moates 12 months' home detention - the maximum available - with strict conditions regarding counselling and banning him from having access to computers or the internet and ordered the destruction of the offensive material.
 
