Home detention for child abuse collection

A West Coast man was sentenced (10 Feb) to eight months’ home detention in the Greymouth District Court for possessing child sex abuse pictures.

Stephen Marshall Neill, 27, unemployed, had earlier pleaded guilty to possessing objectionable publications – 250 computer image files depicting the sexual abuse of children aged from about six months through to early teenage years.

Judge Gary MacAskill refused Mr Neill’s application for name suppression and directed that he have no devices capable of accessing the Internet, no unsupervised access to children and that he attend a psychological assessment.

An Internal Affairs inspector tracked Mr Neill to a West Coast address after a tipoff from Microsoft Hotmail and the United States’ National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Mobile phones, a laptop computer, digital cameras, CDs and DVDs were seized from Mr Neill’s address.

Internal Affairs Community Safety Manager, Steve O’Brien, said there is a global community, including Internal Affairs, combatting the child sexual abuse trade.

“It’s only a matter of time before people indulging in this activity get caught,” Steve O’Brien said. “People, who think they’re safe in the confines of their own home, indulging in viewing or distributing objectionable material on the Internet, should think again. Downloading this material perpetuates this nasty industry by feeding a market that results in crimes being committed against young children.”

ends

© Scoop Media