Satellite links Auckland District Court, Internal Affairs and Norwegian Police for child pornography case

31/07/2003

A satellite video link has been used to allow Norwegian National Police to give evidence from Oslo to the Auckland District Court. The evidence contributed to the imprisonment today of an Auckland Internet child pornography trader.

The man who has previously served a jail term for indecently assaulting children, was today sentenced to 20 months jail on 24 charges of trading Internet child pornography. The Court refused him leave to apply for home detention and ordered forfeiture and destruction of the computer and material seized under a search warrant.

The General Manager of the Department of Internal Affairs’ Gaming and Censorship Regulation Unit, Keith Manch, said that the Court sat at the Auckland University of Technology in May for the international videoconference.

At first, the accused pleaded not guilty to the child pornography charges. The case had been set down for a five-day jury trial in June, but after preliminary hearings and the satellite videoconference, he changed his plea to guilty.

“Courts had never used this technology in a case taken by the Department before,” Mr Manch said. “It proved very useful and we would happily use it again where appropriate.

“It is a good example that while new communications technology can help offenders, it also helps law enforcement agencies.”

The case arose from the Department linking information its Inspectors found in a separate investigation in Dunedin in September 1999 and information provided by the Norwegian Police in February 2000.

Analysis of the Dunedin man’s computer showed a New Zealander calling himself “EMD645” had been advertising to trade child pornography in an Internet relay chat channel dedicated to sex with young boys.

The Norwegian Police provided information that a New Zealander using the nickname “FarIn” was trading electronic picture files of adult men having sex with children and of children engaged in sex acts. From this information, sample files were presented in court.

“Normal New Zealanders would have little understanding of what such images are,” Mr Manch said. “Some of the file names give an idea of how appalling they are and why child pornography is prohibited. Those names include ‘girl10forced11’, ‘tortkidno2’, ‘babe2yr01’ and ‘lilrape3’.”

Department investigations showed that “EMD645” and “FarIn” were user names used by the man and he was tracked to a Glendene address.

A search warrant was executed in March 2000. A computer system, five separate hard drives, 46 CD ROMs, 100 floppy disks, 21 video tapes, 11 books and various magazines and documents were seized.

During the warrant he was seen throwing one of the CD ROMs over a fence. When asked what he had thrown, he replied “nothing”. The CD ROM was recovered.

Much of the information on his computer and disks was heavily encrypted and he refused to provide the passwords. Attempts to decrypt the actual files were unsuccessful, but analysis of the computer found evidence of 8,000 images, many of which were of young children performing sexual acts.

Background

The man is a 37-year-old computer technician of Auckland.

In 1996 he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment on four charges of indecent assault on girls aged under 12. At the same time, he was also convicted on two charges of performing an indecent act with intent.

In 1992 he had been sentenced to supervision after being convicted on two charges of indecent assault on girls aged under 12.