First SA teenager caught selling child abuse material sentenced, no conviction recorded

A teenager has been sentenced for charging up to $10,000 for child abuse material – arrested after he confessed to his mum and pastor.

A teenager arrested for hosting an online chat group trading in child exploitation material is the first youth in South Australia to be caught selling the abhorrent material, a court has heard.

The 17-year-old male, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, “shared, traded and sold” links containing thousands of images and videos of sickening material between January and March 2020.

During sentencing in the Youth Court on Wednesday, Magistrate Oliver Koehn said an investigator reported that he was “not aware of any youth has previously been caught selling child exploitation material in South Australia”.

He said the youth, who was bullied at school, and had “retreated into an online world and became addicted to it” after first discovering adult pornography aged 12.

Mr Koehn said the youth was lured into the offending after being approached online and eventually threatened.

“You ended up sending him some child exploitation material and that’s how the offending began,” he said.

“A twisted sense of satisfaction that you experienced as a result of your involvement in this activity sucked you in and got you hooked.”

He said the youth became “internally conflicted” about his offending and alerted his mother, and then his pastor.

“This effectively brought your offending to an end. The police were contacted, they arrested you and they seized your electronic devices.”

Mr Koehn said the teen had offered up his own young family members – though no abuse was uncovered – and encouraged a man in the USA to abuse a young girl, suggesting he “force or trick her into compliance”. That man was later convicted.

The now-19-year-old pleaded guilty to four offences, including aggravated disseminate child exploitation material, communicating with a child to make them amenable to sexual activity and hosting a website dealing with child exploitation material at an earlier hearing.

The court heard the youth was “actively administrating” an online chat group.

Magistrate Oliver Koehn said the teen charged up to $10,000 for links to the material, which contained children as young as toddlers.

He said an analysis of the links shared found they contained 64,941 images and 17,450 videos, though not all of these were child exploitation material.

Mr Koehn said he was “distressed, appalled and angered“ when reading descriptions of what the material contained and told the youth his offending was “clearly extremely serious”.

Mr Koehn suspended a seven-month period of detention in lieu of a 12-month good behaviour bond. He declined to record any convictions.