Coen man Thomas Byrnes jailed for storing thousands of ‘heinous’ child sexual abuse images on phones

Coen man Thomas Maxwell Byrnes had thousands of ‘abhorrent’ child sex abuse images of the most ‘heinous’ kind stored on four phones, a Cairns court has been told.

Thomas Maxwell Byrnes, 64, of Coen, has pleaded guilty to four charges related to the 197 links he visited and 3363 ‘heinous’ child exploitation images he stored using four phones.

Coen man Thomas Maxwell Byrnes stored more than 3360 “depraved and deplorable” child sex abuse images on four mobile phones depicting sexual crimes being committed against children as young as one, a Cairns court has been told.

Byrnes, 64, pleaded guilty in Cairns District Court to four charges – three counts of using a carriage service to access child abuse material and one state charge of possessing child exploitation material.

He was sentenced to imprisonment of the time he had already served on remand – 538 days.

Crown prosecutor Matt Hancock described the images stored on Byrnes’ four phones as “particularly heinous”, saying Byrnes had also visited 197 links on the internet to access child abuse material.

“This is not a victimless crime – these are real children who are being offended against in order to create these images and it is people like (Byrnes) who are creating a market for them,” Mr Hancock told the court.

Mr Hancock said he would not describe the content of the images in open court, but handed up a schedule for the sentencing judge that outlined a sample of the 3363 images found on Byrnes’ phones.

Thomas Byrnes was sentenced to 538 days’ imprisonment for possessing child exploitation material and using a carriage service to access child abuse material.

He said the “abhorrent” images fell into a very serious category of child exploitation material.

Byrnes was accessing the images between December 2019 and January 2024 while he was aged 58 to 62, and police found the material after they seized and searched his mobile phones in October 2024.

Defence barrister James Sheridan said Byrnes had spent 538 days in custody on remand and had no similar entries in his criminal history.

During sentencing, Judge Joshua Trevino KC said Byrnes had a “large amount” of “Category 1” child exploitation material on his four phones.

The children in the “incredibly disturbing” and explicit images were mostly young girls aged between one and 15, he said.

Justice Trevino sentenced Byrnes to 538 days in prison and placed him on a three-month good behaviour bond, taking into account Byrnes’ plea of guilty and comparable sentences.

“Your offending helped support and maintain a market for this abhorrent material and therefore supported the continued corruption, victimisation and exploitation of real and vulnerable children,” Justice Trevino said.

Judge Joshua Trevino described the images Byrnes had saved on his phone as “abhorrent” and “heinous” and said deterrence was particularly important in sentencing.

“General deterrence is the primary sentencing consideration for offending of this type given the prevalence of this type of material on the internet, the need to protect children from sexual abuse, and the difficulty of policing and detecting this kind of conduct resulting from the anonymity which is provided by the internet.”

Justice Trevino said Byrnes’ criminal history spanned three states and included drug and alcohol-related crime, some violence and property offending.

“The aggravating features (of this case) include the very large number of images you possessed and accessed, and the fact that those images were of a most heinous type, involving appalling abuse of real children,” Justice Trevino said.

Originally published as Coen man Thomas Byrnes jailed for storing thousands of ‘heinous’ child sexual abuse images on phones