Child porn dad’s ‘stupid curiosity’

A TOWNSVILLE father found with a stash of child exploitation material told police the images were a “stupid curiosity” when he got drunk.

The stash of images included those that depicted adults raping children.

Crown prosecutor Josh Francis said police raided the man’s Bushland Beach home on February 19, 2017, after he came to police attention when intelligence flagged suspicious behaviour on his online accounts.

Officers found a stash of 43 illegal photos on his laptop and external hard drive with 30 of the photos falling into one of the most serious categories — level four — on the Oliver Scale that is used to rank the nature of such images.

Eric Stuart Harrison, 45, faced the Townsville District Court where he pleaded guilty to one count of possessing exploitation material.

The man, who has adult children, was living with his partner and their two teenage children at the same time he was searching for “daddy daughter” material online.

Mr Francis said a majority of the images found in the man’s possession fell into Category 4 on the Oliver Scale and depicted an adult raping children.

“It is not a victimless crime … (it) perpetuates an illicit industry involving children,” Mr Francis said

“As to his insight of the offending at the time, he referred to it as a ‘stupid curiosity’ when he got drunk. There was clearly material on his devices that was exploitative to children.”

Defence barrister Michael Hibble said there was an “extraordinary” delay of about two years between police searching the property and charging his client and then further court delays.

Mr Hibble said things were “not going well” for Harrison at the time of his offending and that he was using ice and suffering with depression.

“This was effectively a one-off type of period in his life,” he said. Mr Hibble said his client was searching for adult porn and clicked a link to download child exploitation material instead.

Judge Gregory Lynham sentenced Harrison to a 12 month suspended sentence with an operational period of two years. In reaching the sentence he said he took into account the small number of images, his early plea and the fact Harrison was a first-time offender.