Man Charged With 413 Child Abuse Offences Over ‘Hundreds of Hours’ of Exploitation Material
April 13, 2022MELBOURNE — An Australian man has been charged with more than 400 child abuse offences after police raided his home and seized computers and storage devices containing some 3.8 million exploitative images and videos. Authorities have described the case as one of the most significant child abuse investigations ever conducted in Western Australia.
Police in the Australian state executed search warrants at the 47-year-old man’s Perth home and work address in July 2021, following a tipoff received by the department’s joint anti-child-exploitation team. In the weeks and months that followed, detectives examined “hundreds and hundreds of hours” of child exploitation material found on the seized electronic devices, and identified 24 victims—boys and girls, aged between three and 13—who were allegedly subjected to sexual abuse between 2015 and 2021.
Among the millions of photos and videos were some that allegedly showed “contact offending… by the man on a number of children,” according to Hamish McKenzie, an inspector at Western Australian police’s sex crime division.
“This investigation is one of the most significant child abuse investigations ever conducted in Western Australia insofar as how many images were located and how many victims we will allege were abused,” McKenzie added. “In regards to the child exploitation material located, I need to stress that these are not artificially produced images and this is not pornography. What these images show is real children being abused.”
The man, who has been in prison since July, is charged with 240 counts of indecently dealing with a child under the age of 13 years; 98 counts of indecently recording a child under the age of 13 years; 44 counts of sexually penetrating a child under the age of 13 years; 26 counts of possession of child exploitation material; and five counts of producing child exploitation material.
He is due to appear in Perth Magistrates Court on April 22.
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