Child abuse distributor Andrew Justin Horsfall tries to get 8.5 year penalty reduced

A Brisbane man jailed for the gross possession of child abuse material which he shared over social media tried to argue his penalty was too light. Warning: Distressing details.

In 2022 aged 40 Andrew Justin Horsfall pleaded guilty to 45 child sex offences.

A Burpengary man jailed for 8.5 years gross possession of child abuse material as well as actively distributing numerous videos and images has tried to argue his penalty was too harsh.

Andrew Justin Horsfall possessed about 40,000 files containing terrible material including the sexual torture and abuse of a two year old, and ruled over chat groups for like-minded people where he demanded they share images of young children.

A court judgment revealed his offending occurred over a short but intense 2.5 months between February and April 2020, and came undone when he engaged in a highly sexualised online conversation over social media with a police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl including sending a photo of his erect penis.

Then 38, Horsfall was home alone when police raided his property on April 27 seizing his laptop and mobile phone, on which he used end-to-end encrypted messaging app Kik and was associated with accounts titled “Ped Girls Nation” and “Childfriendly”.

Andrew Justin Horsfall used end-to-end encrypted messaging app Kik to send child abuse images and videos to others.

He used Kik to send child abuse images and videos to others and was “part of groups set up solely for the purpose of exchanging such material”, the Judgement stated.

He said in order to maintain his position in those groups, “he had to send child abuse material on a regular basis or else he would be kicked out”.

Horsfall saved what he was sent by others to a cloud storage device known at Mega to view later and even paid to increase his access to more storage because “the free account only stored 400MB of data”.

He told police it was “just some silly stuff that I was looking into” and was “not really sort of interested in it”.

But further investigations revealed the dark truth of his offending.

The judgment stated his Mega account held about 662GB of storage space containing about 40,000 files that were predominantly video with a mix of images featuring real and anime children ranging in age from toddler to pre-pubescent teen.

Police found child abuse material on his laptop and mobile phone including within his camera roll.

He had even organised some of the files into names to reflect their content.

The content included posed and candid boys and girls in various stages of undress as well as sexual penetrative acts involving children.

He claimed to police he had no idea what he was importing to Mega, had never opened it and maintained he derived no sexual gratification from child abuse material.

But police also found child abuse material on his laptop and mobile phone including within his camera roll.

He “actively sought membership of exclusive chat groups by exchanging child abuse material to receive membership” and distributed material regularly in these groups and to individuals.

“His conduct resulted in his promotion to the level of ‘administrator’ and ‘owner’ of some of these chat groups,” the judgment stated
“Once in that position, he would enforce group rules, such as requiring users to contribute to the groups or face expulsion.”

He bragged about having 500GB of child abuse material in his cloud account and gave some users links to various folders.

The number of members in chat groups he was in varied from two to 54 and he was in at least four groups with more than 20 participants.

“The approximately 40,000 files contained on the Mega account were ‘of a broad spectrum’ but some of the material included video files of sexual engagement with very young children, and a link to what was described as an infant series, depicting sadistic sexual torture and sexual abuse of a child of approximately two years of age,” the judgment stated.

In 2022 aged 40 Horsfall pleaded guilty to 45 child sex offences and was ordered to serve at least a four year, three month non parole period — it was noted at his sentence there was no evidence of remorse beyond the guilty plea.

He has taken his case to the supreme court arguing the penalty was too harsh and not enough weight was given to his personal circumstances, such as the early guilty plea, co-operation with police and limited criminal history.

Justice Lincoln Crowley, in a recent judgment, said he was “very far from persuaded (the) sentence was manifestly excessive” as the penalty was intended to reflect the totality of Horsfall’s criminality “which was extensive and multi-faceted”.

The application for leave to appeal the penalty was rejected.