Court hears naked teen porn claim

By ABIGAIL CASPARI in Rotorua
A former Rotorua district councillor was caught looking at computer images of naked teenage girls by his wife, a court has heard.
Chris Campbell, 36, a former district councillor, is appearing at a defended hearing in the Rotorua District Court.
He has denied charges of having 73 images of child pornography stored on a hard drive on his personal computer, having three printed images of child pornography and three images of child pornography on a floppy disk.
During the first day of Campbell's hearing yesterday Judge Chris McGuire dismissed a further charge of having 24 images of adults having sex with animals after an application was made by the police.
The court was told Juliet Robinson, who married Mr Campbell in 1998, became suspicious her husband was seeing other women.
She started looking at the websites Mr Campbell was accessing on his computer and found "articles" of men having oral sex with their grand-daughters.
When confronted Mr Campbell told Ms Robinson he had an anonymous number so the police could not track it.
One night Ms Robinson saw Mr Campbell masturbating in front of the computer which displayed a picture of a naked girl who looked about 14. Mr Campbell told his wife the girl was probably about 17.
Ms Robinson said she was so upset she left the house but Mr Campbell convinced her to come home.
As time went on she grew more suspicious.
On another occasion she found images on his computer of men having sex with girls as young as four.
When she asked Mr Campbell why he had not deleted the images he became angry and "fobbed me off", Ms Robinson told the court.
She said Mr Campbell told her he had a problem with pornography and asked her to help him.
The couple sat down at the computer and Mr Campbell deleted everything on it "from the young children to the porn sites".
A month later Ms Robinson found more pictures on Mr Campbell's computer of four and five-year-old girls having oral sex with men.
The court was told Ms Robinson went to see a relationship counsellor after Mr Campbell told her she was paranoid about him seeing other women.
In February 2001 the couple separated.
Under cross-examination by Mr Campbell's lawyer, David Jones QC, Ms Robinson said she had stayed with Mr Campbell despite what she had seen because he told her he looked at the pictures out of curiosity and did not have a problem.
"I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt ...
"I wanted to believe him."
Ms Robinson denied putting pictures of child pornography on to Mr Campbell's computer or that she had lied about what he had done.
"If this wasn't real I would be married to Chris today."
A few days after police seized Mr Campbell's computer in June 2003 he spoke to his boss from Radioworks, Sharon Black.
Mrs Black told the court Mr Campbell told her he had accessed child pornography sites and was concerned about what the police would find.
"He had been very upset with himself for what he had been doing and smashed his computer."
Mrs Black said Mr Campbell's job as a radio announcer was already in jeopardy following complaints over text messages he had sent to two young teenage girls.
Mrs Black denied having a personal vendetta against Mr Campbell.
"I think it's very sad what has happened.
"Chris is a very great broadcaster."
The hearing was to continue today.