Bunbury court jails man over child pornography charges

A referral from the US Department of Homeland Security led officers from the Western Australia Joint Anti Child Exploitation Team to execute a search warrant in Usher in January.  

At the home, officers seized a laptop, a mobile phone, a hard drive and were given the password to Collins’ Dropbox account. 

Police discovered over 2000 photos and 1000 videos depicting children in various states of sexual activity. 

Much of the material had been downloaded however Collins admitted a portion of the material had been personally captured by taking advantage of his friend’s six-year-old daughter at a home in Glen Iris. 

Collins, a father of three who moved to Australia in 2014, pleaded guilty to the commonwealth offences of using a carriage services to access child pornography and producing child pornography material between December 2015 and January this year. 

He also admitted to a number of state charges including three counts of indecently recording a child under the age of 13, two counts of indecent dealings with a child under the age of 13 and four counts of possessing child exploitation material.

Judge Bruce Goetze said a psychologist’s report showed Collins made excuses for his behaviour, denied his actions had any sexual motivation and showed little to no remorse for his crimes. 

“You told the psychologist your victim ‘didn’t even know what was happening’ because you had hacked your phone so it would not make a shutter sound when taking photos,” he said. 

Judge Goetze said the commonwealth had selected a small amount of the images for him to view to better understand the material. 

“I have never seen anything like it before,” he said. “Some of it involved children so young they would not be able to talk yet.”

Collins was sentenced to 20 months prison for the commonwealth offences backdated to his arrest on January 13. He was also ordered to serve 20 months in jail for the state offences with that sentence commencing on November 12, 2016. 

Collins will be eligible for parole in September 2017. Once released, he is likely to be deported back to the UK.