Auckland man admits to selling child porn on the net

By CATHERINE MASTERS

From his West Auckland lounge, webmaster Glenn William Roberts sold customers in the United States and Europe access to thousands of images of child pornography.

For US$29.95 ($60) a month, they could go to the members' galleries on two internet sites he administered and look at pictures of children aged 3 to 14 having sex with each other or posing naked.

Clients could buy video CDs of boys engaging in sexual activity for US$50.

Yesterday, in the Henderson District Court, the slight 43-year-old unemployed carpenter admitted 48 charges of possessing, distributing, supplying and copying objectionable material.

He was remanded on bail until December 10, but Judge James Rota ordered him to get his affairs in order because a jail term was likely.

A further 51 charges against Roberts were withdrawn.

Karen Mitchell, lawyer for the Department of Internal Affairs, told the court how in April last year the department was given a tip-off from Interpol in London that a New Zealander was advertising on internet newsgroups that he had movies of pre-teen boys for sale.

In December, it received information the New Zealander was using a fast internet connection to host two child-sex websites.

When Internal Affairs inspectors and a police detective turned up at Roberts' door that month they found him at home using his computer.

He admitted to them he was the host of two websites, designed for use by men with a sexual interest in young boys. They later found there were 97,049 pictures of boys on the open-source web server, and of those 2008 were found to be objectionable.

Roberts admitted he had made several thousand dollars from the sites. A search of his bank statements showed he had banked nearly $20,000 from telegraphic transfers in 15 months.

The children in the CD videos he sold appeared to be of Russian origin, and in some cases the boys were performing sex acts before an audience with a voice-over.

He said he knew they were "illegal and objectionable", said Ms Mitchell.

Nineteen of the CD-Roms seized were from a computer workstation in his lounge. On those were found 143,442 pictures of children and 256 films of children.

More than 34,000 of the pictures were considered objectionable, as were 105 of the films.

Roberts claimed he had made the video CDs himself by copying them from three video recordings he had received from an Israeli man. No trace of this man was found.

Last night, Roberts continued to maintain he had done nothing wrong.

He told television's Holmes he did not think the websites were pornographic. He said he was only involved to pay the rent and never took the photographs himself.

"I'm not a paedophile. I don't get into that.

"To me, it was just another photo. I'm just a backyard guy who didn't think he was doing a great deal wrong."

Dr Ian Lambie, senior lecturer in clinical psychology at Auckland University, said Roberts' comments showed he was trying to minimise what he had done.

Dr Lambie said it was unlikely someone would take part in such an activity just for money.

"His business required children to be sexually abused and he promoted sexual abuse."

Ms Ritchie said the images of the children could never be retrieved from cyber-space.

Mr Roberts' neighbours last night said they were shocked and bewildered when they first heard about the charges.

Brett Barnes, 34, father of a 3-year-old daughter, felt sorry for Roberts.

"He'll pay the price for what he's done, but he's just a hard-working kind of gentleman who keeps to himself trying to make an income. He even gave us a Christmas tree when we first moved in."

Mireille and Donovan Alexander, both 40, are trying to work out how to explain what has happened to their daughters, aged 13 and 6.

"I've given Melissa [13] an inkling of it, but what do you say?" said Mrs Alexander.

"It's a hard thing to come to terms with. I was just so shocked when I heard about it."