James Roy Farmer pleads guilty in Mackay District Court to possessing child exploitation material

A vision-impaired nudist tried to excuse the thousands of explicit child files on his computer, saying he ‘wasn’t looking at what he was downloading’. Read why he got a lighter sentence.

A Sarina nudist was found with more than 1000 pictures and videos of young children posing or being coerced into sexual acts.

James Roy Farmer stood crestfallen in the Mackay District Court dock while his partner of 10 years quietly sobbed in the public gallery behind.

The former house painter, 57, had downloaded 771 images and 921 videos, ranging from children posing sexually to penetration acts.

Police found the files on eight different devices including a computer, mobile phone, tablet, three hard drives and two USBs when they raided Farmer’s Sarina home on October 30, 2020.

Crown prosecutor Samantha O’Rourke said Farmer had told police he was “just fascinated with downloading material from Wickr and he wasn’t looking at what he was downloading”.

James Farmer was found with thousands of child exploitative material was found at his Sarina home.

But she argued this was not the case as Farmer had transferred the files onto other devices.

Ms O’Rourke said it was not the grandfather’s first offence involving children, with Farmer having been convicted in 2002 for taking photos of a 12 to 13-year-old girl.

She said Farmer was a nudist, as was the girl and her family, and he had tried to argue the photos were innocent — a sentiment judge then had deemed “nonsense”.

In addressing Ms O’Rourke’s argument that Farmer had known what he was doing, Farmer’s defence barrister Scott McLennan said his client had more than 65,000 legal files on his devices with child exploitation material making up 1.1 per cent.

Mr McLennan said his client was downloading the images “indiscriminately”.

“Mr Farmer is an ageing, vision-impaired nudist who just needs to say off the internet,” he said.

Mr McLennan said the grandfather was afraid to go to jail, because he was almost blind in his left eye with poor vision in his right.

The court heard Farmer had told Mr McLennan “I can’t see, I won’t be able to protect myself.”

Farmer pleaded guilty in Mackay District Court on February 9, 2022 to possessing child exploitation material.

The maximum sentence is 12 years in jail.

Judge Julie Dick said she acknowledged Farmer would have a harder time than others in jail with his failing vision.

She sentenced him to 18 months jail, suspended after three months with strict conditions, including his internet usage be monitored.

Farmer told the court he intended on never going on the internet again.