Adam Bayard had been collecting child exploitation material since the 1970s

When police raided a Queensland man’s home, they found a catalogue of sickening exploitation images dating back 50 years, a manual on how to groom children and a schedule of dance events attached to his fridge.

Adam Bayard has been jailed for possessing child exploitation material.

Sitting calmly in the dock and wearing a tweed sports jacket, Adam Bayard only moved to adjust his hearing aids.

The 81-year-old showed no remorse as the depths of his sick sexual attracting to little girls was read to the Toowoomba District Court.

Crown prosecutor Abby Kong told the court that Task Force Argo received information from the FBI that led them to raid Bayard’s Kingsthorpe home in March 2023.

Police found 23 laptops and computers containing millions of pornography images and videos.

It was estimated that there were 170,000 unique child exploitation files stored on devices across a secure, encrypted network.

“All of those devices were connected to his library, or his catalogue of child exploitation material so that it could be accessed from any device in the house,” Ms Kong said.

“He named and labelled those devices after girls who appealed to him, named like ‘Penny’ and ‘Miss Melody’”

“They were physically labelled in that way.”

The images ranged from photos of naked girls to the most depraved acts imaginable, including children who were bound and clearly in pain.

During the 12 hour search, Bayard told police he did not feel any guilt and that he had been collecting child exploitation material for decades, starting with hard-copy photos in the ‘70s and ‘80s before he started downloading images and video with internet’s inception in the ‘90s.

“He had 854 images that he had printed out and stored in photo albums in his bedroom,” Ms Kong said.

“He told police he had nothing to feel guilty about, that sexual attraction to children was natural, and he spoke at length about his longstanding interest and research into how children could achieve arousal.

“He told police that he did not think any harm was done to any children as a result of being sexualised and he really sought to shift the blame onto society and the law around the age of consent as opposed to his conduct.”

Among the material was a manual outline on how to groom children.

“He told police he liked watching young girls do anything, such as dancing, gymnastics or skating,” Ms Kong said.

“This was consistent with a spreadsheet on his fridge with eisteddfod times, school art show and the like.”

Given Bayard’s complete lack of remorse, there was little that his lawyer could say in his defence.

David Jones KC told the court that Bayard had no criminal history and an unremarkable childhood.

“He has lived life akin to a hermit … the only intimacy he had was when he paid for it, and that was last century,” he said.

In sentencing, Judge Dennis Lynch took into account Bayard’s lack of remorse, his co-operation with police and his age.

He ordered a five-year jail sentence, suspended after 12 months.

Originally published as Adam Bayard had been collecting child exploitation material since the 1970s