Tauranga Court House. Photo / File
A Bay of Plenty father caught with hundreds of child exploitation images and videos has avoided prison, his name will be kept permanently secret and he will not be added to the sex offender register.
The man was caught after an undercover police officer attached to an Australian taskforce targeting online child exploitation saw his posted comments on a website showing images of pre-teen females, according to the police summary of facts.
The undercover officer sent an email to the offender asking if he had "anything to trade", referring to child exploitation material.
The next day the officer received an email response from the offender stating "like this", and included a link to an electronic album of 152 images and seven videos.
The images and videos depicted exploited young children who appeared to be aged between 10 and 14 years. Seventeen of the files were classified as objectionable, the summary said.
New Zealand police last year seized a Samsung cellphone belonging to the offender which contained a further 210 objectionable images of children of a similar nature.
The offender's laptop was also seized. On the computer's hard drive was evidence of about 374 deleted images, some of which were not recoverable.
However, located in the thumbnails folder were a further 210 objectionable images and four objectionable videos involving children.
The charges were laid following an investigation by the Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand (Oceanz) unit in Wellington.
Last Wednesday, in the Tauranga District Court, the offender was sentenced to nine months' home detention and nine months of post-detention conditions by Judge Paul Mabey, KC.
The sentence included not possessing or accessing any internet-capable device without the written approval of his community probation officer.
The offender earlier pleaded guilty to six charges of possession of child exploitation objectionable publications, and two charges of distributing objectionable material.
The charges were laid under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993.
Each of the first six charges attracts a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The other two charges hold maximum sentences of 14 years' imprisonment.
The man's lawyer, Mark Jepson, submitted that home detention was appropriate as his client had no prior convictions of this nature and he was genuinely remorseful.
Jepson said his client had also undertaken significant rehabilitative steps, including treatment by a clinical psychologist, who assessed him as "low risk" of reoffending.
The defence lawyer also asked the judge to take into account his client's previous good character and to give him full credit for his guilty pleas.
Jepson also urged Judge Mabey to grant permanent name suppression to his client, submitting that publication of his name was likely to cause "extreme hardship" to his family.
Jepson said the family name was quite distinctive and once a report of the sentencing was published on Facebook it potentially could be searched for forever.
He said it was well known that despite media organisations' best efforts to moderate their articles posted on Facebook, other people chose to republish them on other sites and put their own spin on the facts.
The children, who did not know about their father's offending, deserved to be protected from any potential abuse or blight to their lives, the lawyer said.
Judge Mabey told the defendant he was satisfied that he was genuinely remorseful and given the "extensive material" he had read, that he posed a low risk of reoffending.
"It may still be a work in progress but it's clear that in the past two years you have taken significant rehabilitative steps and also have good future rehabilitation prospects."
Judge Mabey said in imposing a home detention sentence, he had also taken into account the defendant's significant contribution to his community.
This was a significant "fall from grace", he said.
Judge Mabey said he granted permanent name suppression to safeguard his children's wellbeing.
"It's not hard to imagine the reaction of the children's classmates and others in the playground and others in the community, and what might be visited upon them if their father's name was allowed to be published."
The judge said publication of the name could "potentially impede the children's progress through life".
Given the length of time since the defendant's offending, the rehabilitative steps taken, and the defendant's low risk of reoffending, he was satisfied that it was not necessary to order his name to be placed on the "onerous" sex offender register.