Kurt William Nicholls sentenced for to child pornography charge

A Bray Park man who had pornographic images of children as young as five on a hard drive has learnt his fate after police found the disturbing content.

Kurt Nicholls has been jailed for disseminating child exploitation material.

A Bray Park man has been jailed after police found thousands of images and videos of child porn on his computer.

Kurt William Nicholls, 27, was sentenced in Tweed Heads Local Court on Tuesday for dissemination or possession of child abuse material.

According to court papers, police found images and videos of pre-pubescent girls and boys engaged in sexual activity and adult men with pre-pubescent girls.

Police say it appeared Nicholls had gathered a large amount of child abuse material over an extensive period of time.

The offence first came to police attention after a man purchased a computer tower off Nicholls in July 2020.

The buyer’s friend was using the computer when he came across a technical issue. In an attempt to fix the problem he found files labelled “5-year-old”, “8-year-old”, and “10-year-old” which had images of children in sexual poses.

The witness removed the hard drive and handed it into Nimbin Police.

Earlier that year in March the user ‘midnightrider94’ had uploaded 98 images and videos of category 1 and 2 child abuse material to a Google platform.

The same user uploaded a video to the same platform on November 30, 2020.

Police tracked the IP address to Nicholls’ mother’s home where he lived.

A search warrant was conducted on May 5, 2021 where Nicholls said ‘midnightrider94’ was his YouTube username.

Nicholls told police he hadn’t accessed the child abuse material for years but he did when he was young.

When asked if there was some on his computer he said “not that I’m aware of”.

Police seized a hard drive from the computer where they located thousands of images and videos of child abuse material along with videos of Nicholls filming himself playing video games.

The images and videos included those uploaded in March and November 2020.

Defence lawyer Cassandra Bennett told the court during early sentencing remarks on Friday that Nicholls had expressed a lot of shame over the offences.

Ms Bennett told the court Nicholls had attempted to remove the material however accepted they were still accessible by a qualified person.

She said Nicholls had spent a lot of time online gaming however as part of his bail he was not allowed to access the internet which forced him into the outside world.

She said Nicholls was supported by his family and girlfriend he met prior to being charged.

Ms Bennett told the court Nicholls had Tourette’s, depression and anxiety which would provide for considerable hardship in custody.

Crown prosecutor Dyllon Westendorf told the court general deterrence was paramount for the type of charge.

Magistrate Geoff Dunlevy convicted and sentenced Nicholls to 15 months in jail.

He will be eligible for parole on January 18, 2023.