Jailed over pics of kids

AN Alice Springs man will walk free after four months behind bars after pleading guilty to taking explicit photos of young girls.

Damien Snoad, 51, appeared in the Alice Springs Supreme Court last month after pleading guilty to possessing child abuse material and intentionally taking “an indecent visual image of a child under the age of 16”.

The court heard that police searched Snoad’s house in September 2017 after receiving complaints that he had secretly been filming his tenants in the bathroom.

The complaints were not substantiated, but during the search police found DVDs and storage devices containing 484 files of child abuse material.

Further analysis found several of the videos were taken of Alice Springs children.

In sentencing, Chief Justice Michael Grant said the images taken of two children “might be categorised as abusive”.

He told the court that the first victim was aged between 8 and 10, who Snoad had recorded while delivering groceries to the girl’s family in his job and allowing her to climb into the truck to retrieve them.

“You positioned the recording device upwards to catch footage of their abdominal and genital regions,” Chief Justice Grant said.

“You then took that footage back to your residence and you created two video files. From those video files, you created a number of still images of the principal victim’s vagina.”

The court heard Snoad also had two pictures of another local girl, aged 7, wearing only underpants.

Chief Justice Grant said the offending had a “chilling and traumatic” impact on the families involved.

“She (one of the victim’s mother) rightly felt that her children should have been safe in their own home and that you had taken advantage of their innocent and trusting natures,” he said.

Snoad was sentenced to two years and four months, suspended after four months, on a number of conditions including ongoing supervision by a Probation and Parole officer.