Child abuse material seized at Port of Tauranga

A shocking haul of child sexual abuse material has been seized on ships arriving in Tauranga during a month-long Customs operation.
Customs officers seized 14 hard drives and five laptops from several vessels.
Some of the items contained "extreme" images of child sexual abuse, and were inspected by investigators and forensic officers who travelled from Auckland.
Filipino man Jayson Cosme, 30, was arrested and charged with six counts of importing objectionable video material showing such abuse.
Cosme had 25 images, including video, in a laptop on board commercial cargo ship Tasman Trader, on which he was a crewman.
Customs officers boarded the ship last Monday and found the files. Once seized, a forensic inspection of Cosme's computer revealed the offensive files had been opened and he was arrested.
Operation League targeted people coming into the port with objectionable material such as child sexual abuse.
It was the first operation of its kind in Tauranga and chief customs officer Steve Wineti said he did not know of any other case nationwide where they had seized so much material involving child sexual abuse at a port.
Mr Wineti said Cosme's material was especially offensive.
"It was at the high end of the scale of offending on young children," Mr Wineti said.
"It's a very good result but the nature of the goods that were seized, it's definitely not nice."
Senior customs officer Eric Menefy said inspecting the material to establish if it was offensive was "definitely challenging" on officers.
"But it's something that needs to be done and obviously only people of the right mind can do it," he said.
"It's not everyone's cup of tea and to be honest no one likes it but it has to be done to make sure that we can stop this sort of material coming through.
"Parents find it very hard, especially when they go home and try to switch off from it. It can be hard on them."
Some of the material seized "from this haul" involved Asian children.
New Zealand Customs port manager for Tauranga Mike Farnworth said the worrying aspect of such activity was that it was not a victimless crime.
It was increasing in volume, numbers of offenders, and seriousness of content, he said.
 Customs would continue to investigate these types of offences in the maritime environment, Mr Farnworth said.
Cosme has appeared in Tauranga District Court.
He was convicted and fined $1000 on each charge, along with costs amounting to a total of $6797.
Cosme has since paid the fine and left the country. Alan Bell, national director for Ecpat Child Alert, commended the work of New Zealand Customs but said Cosme's penalty did nothing to stop him from future trading for profit, at the cost of children being abused.
"Unfortunately our view is that having done this the sentencing does not appear to be consistent or sometimes rigorous enough - as in this case."
 Ecpat Child Alert is a New Zealand organisation that works toward protecting children from sexual exploitation.
Child sexual abuse and the trade surrounding it was a "significant" problem for New Zealand, Mr Bell said.
More than four million attempts (clicks) at accessing online child sexual abuse sites were recorded within a year when the Department of Internal Affairs ran an internet filter to identify such sites, Mr Bell said.
Many of these involved children under 5 years old.
"New Zealand ranks up with the rest of the world in this form of sexual exploitation of children.
"The internet does not recognise borders and there has been a proliferation of such sites making access easier and allowing people to conduct this activity in privacy to try to avoid detection," Mr Bell said.
"Every image is of a real child that has been abused, raped, tortured and it requires a concerted effort to reduce the demand."
The maximum penalty for importing objectionable material is five years' imprisonment.