Man sentenced over child abuse material found on phone pawned at Cash Converters

A pawn shop employee made a horrendous discovery when he was preparing a mobile phone for sale – now the device’s “curious” owner has been sentenced.

A man who screenshotted hundreds of child abuse images was caught out after pawning his phone to a second hand dealer, a court has heard.

Robert Marinus Hart, 48, of Seacombe Gardens was sentenced in the District Court after pleading guilty to a charge of aggravated possession of child abuse material.

In sentencing, Judge Joana Fuller said Hart’s offending was detected when a Cash Converters employee was preparing his Samsung phone for sale in May 2022. The employee then alerted police about a number of images containing children.

A search of that phone revealed 632 images believed to be child exploitation material.

Officers were unable to access the data downloaded from a second phone pawned a year earlier.

The court heard Hart had told officers he accessed the material via the application Snapchat after seeing advertisements for child abuse material. He then screenshotted and saved the material.

Robert Hart will serve a home detention sentence after screenshotting child abuse material images he found on Snapchat. Generic image. Picture: Istock

Judge Fuller said Hart, a father of five, denied any sexual interest in images and had told a psychologist that he was “curious” about the material and how he could access it on Snapchat after initially using a particular search term “not realising it had a particular meaning with respect to a sexually active young girl”.

“Once the search revealed images of children you should have stopped looking but you did not. The irresistible inference from the fact that you screenshotted the images is that you wished to retain them because you did have a sexual interest in them,” she said.

Hart did not distribute or share the images, which were saved but not catalogued in any way on Hart’s phone.

“The fact that you pawned your phone without deleting the images is also inconsistent with a high level of interest in those images or a desire to avoid detection,” she said.

Judge Fuller said Hart was remorseful and had pleaded guilty before even obtaining legal advice.

“Child exploitation material is a serious social evil. Courts have to recognise how serious it is and do what they can to protect children from being exploited and exploited again and again in such a way,” she said.

“It is not, as many people seem to think, a victimless crime.”

After a discount for his plea, Judge Fuller imposed a head sentence of one year, eight months and seven days with a 12-month non-parole period to be served on home detention.

She said Hart was yet to alert his employer to his criminal offending but it would be “necessary” to tell his boss to obtain passouts to attend work.