‘Proud pedo’ McCormack avoids jail – it was just fantasy
SELF-confessed “proud pedo” Ben McCormack has escaped jail on child porn charges because his “wish list” of sex with young boys was just “fantasy”.
The 43-year-old was sentenced yesterday to a good behaviour bond for three years and fined $1000 at Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court.
He had pleaded guilty to two charges of using a carriage service to transmit child pornography after Skype conversations between him and a West Australian pedophile were intercepted by police.
Judge Paul Conlon said to McCormack after the sentence was handed down: “You have never harmed anyone and accordingly I wouldn’t like you to go forth and harm yourself. Hopefully those who supported you throughout this period will manage to convince you otherwise.”
The court had heard McCormack twice tried to take his life after he was arrested in April.
Judge Conlon said it was clear from the conversations between the two men they were talking about their shared “fantasies”.
The conversations took place between April 30, 2015 and January 1, 2017.
In them, McCormack confessed he favoured boys as young as seven because they had “perfect bodies”, and said he was a “proud pedo, proud b lover”.
The judge said it was clear the worst aspects of child porn cases were “absent” in McCormack’s case.
“There was no transmission of pictures or images of child pornography ... there was no attempt to sexually exploit children or grooming,” he said.
The judge said the Crown had conceded the charges couldn’t have been brought in their current form if they had taken place in person and not over the internet.
He considered the charges fell at the “lower and of the scale” and McCormack had shown “genuine contrition”.
Judge Conlon said a motivating factor in sentencing was McCormack’s previous good character as a journalist with A Current Affair and also that he sought help to control his deviant sexual urges long before his arrest.
A man who claimed to be a victim of sexual abuse threw a cup of water, which he’d apparently spat in, over McCormack as he left court.