Andrew Walker: Rutherford man pleaded guilty to possession of child abuse material
Australian Federal Police rocked up at a Bunnings store to speak to a Rutherford man who was harbouring hundreds of images and videos of child abuse material.
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A Bunnings employee who was caught up in a nationwide sting into alleged child sex offenders has pleaded guilty to four charges of possessing child abuse material.
Andrew John Walker, 49, was at work on the 12th of August last year when Australian Federal Police from Child Protection Operations — part of Operation Molto — arrived at the Taylor’s Beach Bunnings store to speak to Walker.
It was just half an hour later they raided his Rutherford home.
Officers located several items including a portable drive, USBs and SD cards in Walker’s bedroom, riddled with hundreds of images and videos of child abuse material, according to police facts.
More than 200 category 1 images — deemed the most serious — were found on a portable drive which featured naked pre-pubescent males in compromising positions, some images where their hands and feet were bound.
A video found was of a three-month-old baby, according to police facts.
The discovery saw the arrest of Walker, who was taken to Maitland Police Station and charged.
Court documents said at the time of the offending the 49-year-old was a registrable person on the child protection register.
It was also detailed he had been convicted in 2012 of using a carriage service for child pornography material, while in 1993 was convicted of assaulting a person with an act of indecency and committing an act of indecency towards a person.
Walkers arrest was part of Operation Molto, co-ordinated by the Australian Federal Police-led Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE), which was launched in 2019 after an international tip-off that thousands of men worldwide were sharing child abuse images over a cloud-based storage system.
Some of the alleged offenders, who are also accused of producing their own child abuse material online, were allegedly in possession of ‘abhorrent’ material produced by a man arrested by the AFP in 2015 under Operation Niro.
This resulted in the dismantling of an international organised paedophile syndicate.
The operation led to arrests right across the country, with 350 charges laid against men between the ages of 19 and 57, and 16 children removed from harm.
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