Online child abuser jailed
A Christchurch man spent hours at a time watching and sharing child sex abuse pornography, failing to appreciate real children were being harmed, a judge says.
Judge Paul Kellar told 61-yearold Victor James Puru about the scale the problem at his sentencing yesterday, before jailing him for two years and five months.
The judge said it was estimated that more than 200 new child sexual abuse images were circulated on the internet every day, and he told Puru that 750,000 sexual predators were connected to the internet at any time.
The United Nations estimated
10,000 to 20,000 minors were victims of child sexual abuse networks. The number of child sexual abuse images had quadrupled between 2003 and 2007.
In New Zealand, over a million clicks on illegal child sex abuse websites were identified by the Department of Internal Affairs during a two-year trial period ending in 2009.
The court was told Puru thought of the material as images rather than children, and spent hours at a time watching pornography.
Judge Kellar said Puru had showed little remorse and even less insight into his behaviour. He had a high level of sexual preoccupation during the offending, but had to appreciate there were real children shown in the images and videos.
Defence counsel Josh Lucas said the case showed the insidious nature of internet pornography. It was a ‘‘vicious and captivating whirlpool’’. Puru had started by watching ‘‘regular pornography’’, but moved into other illegal areas. He needed to do courses to understand the harm being done.
Both the prosecutor and Judge Kellar said viewing the images created a market for them.
Judge Kellar said if there was no viewing of the images, the victimisation of children would not happen at anything like its present scale.
Puru pleaded guilty in December to charges of possessing and distributing objectionable publications, which included adults in sexual activity with boys and girls, dogs, horses, sheep, donkeys, and a snake.
Police investigated Puru’s computer when he accessed the internet and downloaded the objectionable material, then distributed child exploitation material from it.
He has been held in custody during the remand for sentence.
The judge ordered his computer hard drive be forfeited.