By GREGG WYCHERLEY
A partially blind Paeroa man has been sentenced on internet child pornography charges after he was detected by authorities here and by German police.
Martin Nelson Silby, aged 33, was sentenced yesterday in the Waihi District Court to 200 hours' community work on 12 charges of advertising and
trading child pornography.
Silby's computer held 679 pornographic images of children, including pictures of 4-year-old girls being sexually abused by men, and young children being forced into sexual acts with other children.
Department of Internal Affairs staff detected Silby, who was using the nickname "Servin", advertising in an internet chat room to trade pornographic pictures of pre-teenage children.
To gain access, Servin advertised you had to type "!Teenies" and that his computer contained "New Teen and Preteen Pics and Movies".
Three days later the German Police Computer Crime Squad detected the same man, then using the nickname "Serviz".
Department staff traced the man to his Paeroa address and executed a search warrant, seizing computer hard drives, floppy discs and printed files.
Silby admitted the charges last October, and at sentencing yesterday, Prosecutor Duncan McWilliam said the prisoner had used a special program to magnify the images because of his sight problems.
Mr McWilliam said the "serious, sinister offending" was "not victimless" and called for severe punishment.
Defence lawyer Michael Curtis said in mitigation that Silby ran the site for only two months and closed it voluntarily before he was aware of being detected, and had never attempted to make money from his activities.
Judge Peter Rollo condemned the child pornography trade as "an insidious cancer" on society, and warned traders of the likelihood of detection and the serious penalties that would follow.
Judge Rollo said child pornography traders needed to know that society would not tolerate such activity and refused Silby's application for name suppression. He ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the seized hard drives, floppy discs and printed files and ordered Silby to pay $500 towards the prosecution costs.
