Fury at child porn penalty

By ROSALEEN MacBRAYNE

A psychiatric nurse caught with more than 15,000 explicit child-sex images on his computer has been sentenced to eight months' imprisonment and given leave to apply for home detention.

The decision has outraged groups working to end the trade in child sex abuse images, who say home detention trivialises the offence and allows people to go on offending.

Ian George Thomas, 45, of Te Puke, was given leave by Judge Christopher Harding to apply for home detention in the Tauranga District Court yesterday.

The start of his jail term was not deferred.

Denise Ritchie, spokeswoman for the organisation End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (Ecpat), said the case was the second of its kind in eight days.

"It implies that those who contribute directly to the online rape and sexual abuse of babies and children are committing offences at the lowest end of the scale.

"If our hope is to end the trade, we must crack down heavily on those creating the demand - men like Thomas. A prison sentence served in prison, combined with a compulsory sex offender treatment programme, is the only appropriate penalty."

The judge ordered forfeiture of Thomas' computer and destruction of the disks.

Thomas pleaded guilty last month to five charges of distributing objectionable images of young boys on the internet and 20 representative counts of possession.

The prison term was imposed on the five serious charges and he was convicted and discharged on the remainder.

For making the material available, the maximum penalty is 12 months in prison or up to $20,000 for each charge. Possession carries a fine of up to $2000 on each count.

Now sacked from his job at Tauranga Hospital, Thomas was traced online by an American law enforcement agency. New Zealand police and Internal Affairs were alerted and they raided his home last September.

The court heard that 14,580 pictures and 844 video clips were found on the computer and 1418 pictures on diskettes.

About 80 per cent of the files were objectionable because they were of young boys, from babies to early teens, having sexual acts inflicted on them, performing sex acts and in sexualised poses.

Thomas admitted posting pictures in an internet message club and collecting what he called "child sex" pictures.

Judge Harding said such offending victimised the children concerned and children in general.

A probation report showed that Thomas continued to justify and trivialise his offending and had little motivation to change his behaviour, which had taken place over an extended time.

He had debts and no job, but had pleaded guilty and had no previous convictions, the judge said.

Last week Stephen Karl Folster, 33 of Blenheim, who traded images of young children being raped and abused, was sentenced to eight months' prison.

But the jail term was deferred by the Blenheim District Court to allow Folster to apply for home detention.