Drive for tougher child porn verdicts

More than 38,000 pictures of naked children comprised a virtual library of paedophilia on Dustin Arthur Barrett's computer.

In July the 30-year-old Christchurch computer technician, one of three men convicted of possessing or trading internet child porn in the past month, received New Zealand's toughest sentence for trading in objectionable pornographic material - 26 months' jail.

Barrett is one of 116 successful prosecutions by the Department of Internal Affairs since the agency set up a unit to police internet porn in 1996.

However, campaigner against child exploitation Denise Ritchie describes the sentences given out to Barrett and other "virtual paedophiles" as "paltry" compared with the acts inflicted on children to create the material.

She says you don't have to look too far to find examples.

Two weeks ago 41-year-old Nelson information systems analyst Alan George Price, now living in Auckland, escaped a jail term after being convicted of trading porn which included images of children being raped. He received a sentence of 300 hours' community work.

Leslie Alfred Way, a part-time Nelson photographer, was last week fined $1000 for having about 1000 illicit images stored on his computer. It was the second time he had been convicted of possessing objectionable material.

Ms Ritchie said those sentences were a joke and allowed offenders to deny the serious nature of their offending.

"These people are showing a sexual interest in children and many of them don't acknowledge that there is anything wrong in what they are doing. They need to face up to the seriousness of their offending."

Her group, End Child Prostitution Pornography and Trafficking (Ecpat NZ), has been at the forefront of a push to strengthen the laws around child porn trading.

The longest sentence that can be handed down for a single charge of trading child porn is one year. Barrett, Ms Ritchie said, got longer only because he was convicted of 17 counts of trading and 70 counts of possessing objectionable material.

She said the maximum sentence was grossly insufficient when dealing with someone like Barrett, a repeat offender who had already spent a year in prison after a previous porn trading conviction.

"We need to be reminded that these are recordings of sexual crimes against children and people like Barrett are creating greater and greater demand for more explicit images of very young children including toddlers and babies."

Even worse, she said, was the maximum penalty of a $2000 fine for those who merely possess illicit material without trading it.

"Child pornography is all about demand and supply, so it's really important to be able to crack down on the users, because they are the demand side."

New Zealand was lagging far behind Britain and Canada, where traders can face up to 10 years in prison for trading and five years for possession.

"We would like to see it increased to the same level as Canada and the UK."

Ms Ritchie said it was also almost impossible for censorship compliance officers to get a search warrant based on suspicion of possession.

"The public is under the false impression that most people who have been caught are people who just have this stuff in their possession. They're not. New Zealanders are really prolific traders in this material."

Internal Affairs would not comment on the law.

However, salvation may not be far away for tougher sentence campaigners.

A spokesman for Justice Minister Phil Goff said officials were finalising an amendment to the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act, which would see traders of illicit porn face up to 10 years behind bars and users face a sentence of up to two years' jail.

It could be some time before it is passed into law. It will be introduced to Parliament this year, but it will then have to go through the lengthy select committee process, where even if it gains cross-party support it is likely to face a barrage of submissions that could delay it for some time.

Ms Ritchie said the Government's amendment was a step in the right direction, but the process needed to be hurried along.

"The longer the amendment takes to go through, the more offenders will be able to walk away lightly."

New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties chairman Michael Bott said the Government also needed to be mindful of public pressure, which could easily result in a witchhunt.

"The Peter Ellis trial, for example - ritualistic abuse was the latest fashion, everyone was into that and you had quite draconian sentences put on people with very little evidence."

- NZPA