Blacktown man avoids jail after child abuse images found in nursing home
A wheelchair-bound man who was found with dozens of explicit images of his ex-wife’s grandkids will serve his jail sentence in a nursing home.
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A man who was found with dozens of child abuse images of his ex-partner’s grandchildren stored on a USB drive at a western Sydney nursing home has been labelled “despicable” by a magistrate.
The 68-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, narrowly avoided jail when he was sentenced in Blacktown Local Court yesterday on two counts of possessing child abuse material and another two of using a carraige service to menace, harass and offend.
Court documents showed the man embarked on a years-long harassment campaign against his two ex-wives by uploading sexually explicit photos of them on the internet captioned with their personal details, including their address and phone numbers.
One of the man’s former wives was not aware he had taken explicit photos of her during their relationship and first discovered the photos online.
The man also uploaded images of the women’s daughters to the internet which had been photoshopped with their heads on pornographic images.
In 2012, the man dropped a USB drive containing hundreds of the explicit images in his former partner’s driveway.
Between 2017 and 2019, the man uploaded thousands of images of the women and their daughters on the internet along with sexually explicit captions and their personal details.
In 2019, the matter was reported to police which led to raids on the man’s current residence, a Blacktown nursing home.
A second raid on a Pendle Hill nursing home, where the man had lived previously, uncovered more USBs with hundreds of similar images and documents titled ‘Exposing your wife – Tips on how to humiliate and degrade a person online’.
Also found on the USBs were 60 images of his ex-partner’s grandchildren taken at a wedding when they were aged 11 and three.
The images were captioned with sexually graphic comments about the children and their grandparents.
Police said the images amounted to child abuse material even though they did not depict the children in an overtly explicit way.
In sentencing, magistrate Leanne Robinson labelled the man’s behaviour as “abhorrent, malicious and persistent”.
“(The child abuse images) are explicit, they are shocking and they are offensive,” Ms Robinson said.
“It is so shocking, so despicable.”
The court heard the man was bed-bound and required around-the-clock care and would not be suited to full-time jail.
Ms Robinson acknowledged the difficulties of the man continuing to live in a nursing home while serving out his sentence.
He will instead serve his term of imprisonment by way of an Intensive Corrections Order for nine months.
He was also ordered to enter into a Community Corrections Order for two years and three months.
During this time, he will be required to attend sex offender treatment and will be banned from having contact with anyone under the age of 18. He is also banned from using electronic devices unless under supervision from nursing home staff.