Canberra public servant sentenced for online child abuse material charges will fight to keep name a secret

One of Australia’s most senior former public servants will fight to keep his name a secret after dodging jail on sick online child abuse charges.

One of Australia’s most senior public servants spent his evenings drinking heavily, Googling “family nudes”, and exchanging sex fantasies with a woman he met online, a court has heard.

The disgraced former bureaucrat, who cannot be named, faced the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday where he narrowly dodged jail and being registered as a child sex offender.

The middle-aged father-of-two admitted he attached two realistic, animated child abuse material images to an email last year.

Google intercepted and suspended his Gmail account before he sent it to his overseas lover, to whom he often sent emails about his sexual fantasies.

The disgraced former senior public servant leaves the ACT Supreme Court on Monday evening.

The man, who lives in Canberra’s southern suburbs, was arrested during a police raid and spent a night in the lockup before being granted bail.

According to court documents, one of the pictures was of a girl wearing nothing but underwear, standing next to an adult man with an erection.

Another image was of four naked children in sexual poses with an adult woman.

A police computer expert found more child abuse material on his laptop, but it was unclear whether he intentionally downloaded it and he was not charged over that material.

In an interview with police, he admitted he had looked at child abuse material a year or two earlier, and that the sexual fantasies he wrote about to his love interest overseas “generally do not involve children”.

The former public servant admitted to having two realistic animated child abuse images on his computer. He wore a baseball cap, glasses and a surgical mask as he left court.

He said he sometimes stumbled across child abuse material during searches for “teen porn” and “family nudes”.

The court heard the man was a former journalist who joined the public service in the late 90s, where he climbed the ranks until he resigned after being charged.

He hopes to find work in a different role.

A company which advertises him as an employee on its website is affiliated with a NSW Government children’s sports funding scheme.

After his wife left him, and while in a senior public service role with a high level security clearance, the man would often drink heavily, take sleeping tablets and impulsively watch pornography to deal with his mental health issues.

The former public servant quit his job after being arrested with child abuse material.

A psychologist has found he is not a paedophile.

Since his arrest, his identity has been kept secret under a series of non-publication orders made by Magistrate Glenn Theakston.

On Tuesday, Chief Justice Helen Murrell said there was no proper justification for keeping his identity a secret any longer, and said one of the reasons Mr Theakston gave for the non-publication orders “doesn’t make a lot of sense”.

The ACT Court of Appeal will decide whether the man’s identity will remain a secret.

She ordered the non-publication order to be revoked, but the man’s barrister, John Purnell SC, said he would appeal that decision, meaning it will remain in place.

Chief Justice Murrell convicted the man and ordered him to be of good behaviour for two years, among a string of other strict conditions.