Offending ‘calculated and premeditated’

Paedophile Bruce Darroch says he went to some ‘dark places’ while offending.

During his sentencing on Friday, Crown prosecutor Amanda Gordon described Darroch’s offending as calculated and premeditated.

She also referred to a letter Darroch wrote to the court where he admitted ‘‘I went to dark places’’.

But Darroch’s lawyer Russell Fairbrother, QC, said his client had expressed remorse for his offending and had sought mental health treatment.

He also said the sending of photographs was in relation to creating a website for the school.

However, in his summation, Judge Tony Snell rejected both the school website claims and the argument Darroch had shown remorse.

‘‘I decline to give you credit for remorse. You have fought this all the way, failed to give passwords. Your remorse is for the predicament you find yourself in,’’ he said.

Snell was also damning when referring to the photographs of children at Darroch’s school that he had shared online, which were not objectionable in themselves, but were accompanied with stories Darroch had written.

‘‘[The stories contained] sexual abuse, including bondage and punishment which you would like to do given the opportunity ... disturbingly, a number of these images were of pupils at your school,’’ he said.

‘‘The context of the words is at the highest level of seriousness. It talks about rape and the detention of children, accompanied with photos of children, real children from your school.’’

‘‘The exploitation of the victims at your school is profound and will be ongoing for as long as those images are available on the internet.’’

Snell was also explicit in rejecting Fairbrother’s request for a home detention sentence.

‘‘I would not have considered home detention for you. It would have been inadequate for these offences,’’ he said.

Darroch faced six charges in total: possession of objectionable material, making an objectionable publication and two charges each of supplying objectionable material and failing to assist a police search.

The failure to assist police charges stemmed from his refusal to provide passwords to unlock a number of encrypted hard drives.