Jail for repeat offender
1 July 2009
A 33-year-old repeat offender was jailed for 18 months today for distributing child sexual abuse images.
The unemployed man of Port Chalmers pleaded guilty to 10 charges of distributing an objectionable publication and was sentenced in the Dunedin District Court by Judge Paul Kellar.
The Department of Internal Affairs said the man was warned in 1997 and convicted in 2001 for trading objectionable material. In June 2006 an Internal Affairs investigator discovered he was again making child sexual abuse material available via peer-to-peer software on the Internet. The inspector downloaded 26 files from his shared folder, 16 of which were objectionable.
No objectionable files were found on his computer because he had used a cleanup programme. But there was evidence that a shared folder had contained a significant number of image and video clip files featuring the sexual abuse of children.
Internal Affairs Deputy Secretary, Keith Manch, says the case shows that the Department can overcome the most sophisticated attempts to conceal offending.
Media contact:
Keith Manch, Deputy Secretary, Department of Internal Affairs
Ph 04 495 9329; cell 021 227 6363
Trevor Henry, communications adviser, Department of Internal Affairs
Ph 04 495 7211; cell 0275 843 679
