Today an Auckland man, Travis Jay Hulme, who had been found with thousands of images and movies depicting bestiality and abuse of children has had an appeal for home detention rejected and will serve 22 months jail. He was sentenced last year but appealed arguing for home detention instead.

The prosecution came about through police action in Luxembourg in Europe who contacted Interpol in Wellington. Interpol then contacted the censorship Compliance unit of the Department of Internal Affairs who duly carried out an investigation and raided the offender’s house in Massey, West Auckland.

Alan Bell, Director of ECPAT Child ALERT says ”This is a good demonstration of international cooperation between law enforcement agencies. It shows that no one is beyond the reach of the law. People who persist in accessing illegal child sex abuse sites should take this as a clear signal that their activities are being monitored and they are not safe from the law just because they are contacting overseas sites.”

Customs seized one computer and found 63 movies and 1416 images of "teen/adult material", 58 movies and 20 images of bestiality and 17 movies and 1964 images of children in sexual poses or activity. A laptop searched had 18 gigabytes of material including 11,000 images of child sex, and movies of pornographic cartoons and bestiality.

“This is a gross abuse” says Bell. “The decision by the judge to deny the appeal and to enforce the jail sentence is warranted and should serve as a signal to other people indulging in this illegal activity. These children are real and feel the pain of being abused and the people that contribute to this industry only create more demand for new victims to be abused.”

Justice Wylie rejected the appeal saying that home detention would not have satisfied the deterrent aspect required by such serious offending.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On Failures Of Care For Those With Mental Disabilities

Hard to imagine a more disturbing insight into the treatment of the vulnerable than the Health Ministry report on Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau. The Ministry has found that the country’s only kaupapa Maori intellectual disability residential care provider has been “seriously dysfunctional.”

The ministry says the business has failed to recruit and retain quality staff – and says the kaimahi (caregivers) that have been employed are seriously unsuitable for the job, lacking basic knowledge. But Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau doesn’t get all the blame. The report says there’s a significant gap under disability laws to ensure there’s oversight by qualified clinical professionals. More>>