Macksville: Michael McFarlane, 58, pleads guilty after accessing child abuse material
A Macksville man has admitted to having a problem with child abuse material after he was found with files of children as young as one-year-old. Here’s the latest from court.
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A Macksville man has pleaded guilty to accessing child abuse material that predominantly included girls, with some as young as one-year-old being sexually abused by men.
Michael McFarlane, 58, pleaded guilty in Coffs Harbour Court on Tuesday to using a carriage service to access child abuse material on a home and a workshop computer at his residence.
McFarlane came to the attention of police in January 2023 after his home was raided and two computers and a USB were seized on April 27, 2023.
Court documents reveal that during the raid, McFarlane told police he’d been “looking at online material that he shouldn’t be looking at,” and was aware he had “a problem”.
During the search McFarlane admitted to running a software program that operates via an encrypted peer to peer network allowing anonymous browsing and file sharing.
Between the home computer, a workshop computer and a USB seized, McFarlane had accessed 61 cached files during April 4 and April 17, 2023.
There were also 30 deleted files that had been viewed or downloaded.
Police determined the child abuse material “predominantly depicted pre-pubescent female children engaged in penile-vaginal sexual intercourse with adult males”.
The files found on McFarlane’s computers were itemised with detailed descriptions of the abuse contained in them.
They included the descriptions of the rape of a one-year-old girl.
McFarlane remains on bail and is yet to be sentenced.
He is due to appear in Coffs Harbour District Court on December 20, 2024.
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Originally published as Macksville: Michael McFarlane, 58, pleads guilty after accessing child abuse material
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