New evidence in Grafton man’s child abuse material possession court sentencing

A police prosecutor submitted new evidence, in three sealed envelopes, against a Grafton Woolworths night packer on charges for possession of child abuse material. See what it means for the case.

Mr Dale Jerel Rixon, a night packer at Woolworths, faced sentencing in the Grafton Criminal Court on Wednesday, February 2, after pleading guilty to two charges of possess child abuse material and possess a prohibited drug.

But new material, namely a selection of images, tendered as evidence by the police prosecution delayed the sentencing.

Defence claims images contain child models

Defence lawyer, Ms Anne-Alece Johnston built a case for her client centred on depression, a relationship breakdown and substance abuse. She added her client had only downloaded the images in question and had not redistributed them and this should be taken into account. 

Ms Johnston claimed Mr Rixon had accidentally stumbled upon the images from a pop up after searching the web for images of young gymnasts.

Ms Johnston also claimed her client considered the images, downloaded from the pop up, to be of child models. She emphasised the majority of the images contained on the two laptops were of clothed children.

In response the police prosecutor Sergeant Fairleigh said there was certainly no mistake the children in the images were models. “Do not accept this was a mistake,” she said addressing the magistrate.

Material tendered

Magistrate Kathy Crittenden adjourned the sentencing to assess the images against a scale that would allow her to determine the seriousness of the offences.

Magistrate Crittenden requested that extreme caution be taken with the images, and required them and the scale, to be sealed in three envelopes marked ‘Not to be opened’.

Sergeant Fairleigh, described the evidence submitted on the day as a range of more serious images to less serious.

According to Sergeant Fairleigh the images were chosen from a collection of approximately one thousand images collated from two laptops over two time periods.

The first charge of possess child abuse material was for the dates between August 2, 2019 and May 19, 2020 at South Grafton.

The second further charge for possession of child abuse material was for May 9, 2020 to June 9, 2020. The third charge, possess prohibited drug, is for 2.8 grams of cannabis on June 9, 2020

Sentencing is adjourned to February 16.