Apprentice’s dirty child porn secret discovered in Christmas party phone scroll bust
A YOUNG Victorian apprentice’s colleagues were scrolling through his mobile phone photos at a Christmas party — but they didn’t expect to discover his shocking criminal secret.
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A YOUNG Ballarat apprentice has narrowly avoided jail after colleagues scrolling through his mobile phone photos uncovered his dirty criminal secret.
Brandon Wood, 21, was celebrating the end of another year as an apprentice cabinet maker when colleagues started looking through his phone at their work Christmas party.
When they scrolled through a folder titled “recently deleted”, they were shocked to find hundreds of child porn images and movies.
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Among the vile collection was material categorised among the worst by authorities, including sadism and bestiality.
The colleagues took photos of the images on their own phone and reported Wood, who was 19 at the time, to local police.
Wood was arrested shortly after and made full admissions, confessing he was a daily porn viewer with an attraction to young girls.
He also admitted to sending some of the pictures he had found to strangers online.
Wood said he first happened upon child pornography as a 15-year-old and had been purposely seeking it out in the months before his arrest.
Police found 212 pictures and 51 child porn movies on his phone and hundreds of other explicit pictures.
A search of other computers and USB sticks at his home found no further material.
Wood, who pleaded guilty to a single charge of possessing child pornography material, faced a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.
But he narrowly avoided a prison term in part because of his youth, lack of prior criminal history, and rehabilitation since his arrest in 2016.
Sentencing Wood on Friday, County Court judge Sue Pullen said he was a man with “quite good” prospects of rehabilitation who had been left devastated by his crime.
He had lost his job, been left embarrassed and ashamed after his habit was discovered and had immediately sought medical treatment for his addiction.
The court heard Wood was bullied while at school, now suffered from depression and had relatively unsophisticated social skills.
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For those reasons, and because of his youth, it was determined imprisonment could be harmful to him.
Judge Pullen said she accepted Wood, who pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, was genuinely remorseful.
But she reminded him that “the offence of possessing child pornography cannot be classed a victimless crime, the children in the end are the victims,” she said.
“The mere fact that persons are prepared to possess child pornography, albeit for their private purposes, necessarily creates a market for the corruption and exploitation of children.”
Wood was placed on a three-year community corrections order in which time he cannot leave Victoria and will remain under supervision.
He will be placed on the sex offenders register for eight years, must complete 250 hours of community work and undergo psychiatric assessment and treatment as directed.