Paul Worsnop handed community corrections order after being convicted of possessing child abuse material

A homeless former school chaplain who possessed close to 1000 sickening child abuse images has been spared jail. Here’s why.

Paul Worsnop has avoided jail after he was convicted of possessing child abuse material.

A former school chaplain who possessed close to 1000 child abuse images has avoided jail.

Paul Worsnop, 64, faced the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday where he was convicted and placed on a two-year community corrections order after he was found guilty in October of possessing child abuse material.

The sickening images were saved to an external hard drive between 2009 and 2013 before he concealed them in a folder called “virus material” to avoid detection.

The Herald Sun last year revealed Worsnop was charged and stood down from Victoria Police in August 2021, where he had worked as a chaplain for 10 years.

From 2014, Worsnop also worked as a school chaplain at St Helena Secondary College until October 2021 after a brief stint at Auburn High School.

Worsnop working as a Victoria Police chaplain in 2013.

Magistrate Leon Fluxman said Worsnop’s offending was “serious”, describing to the court the graphic nature of the 861 images the sex offender had sourced from the internet.

“The court has had the unfortunate opportunity to view a representative sample and there are images of some very young children,” he said.

“The possession of child abuse material is not a victimless crime.

“Children are abused to supply the market.”

The court heard Worsnop had been living out of his car since his Vermont home was raided on August 11, 2021, and police seized multiple devices.

His wife of 28 years “separated” from him that same day, with Mr Fluxman revealing she has not made contact with him since.

Worsnop had savings following the breakdown of his marriage but chose to spend the money on fighting the allegation, rather than putting a roof over his head.

Prosecutor Bianca Moleta last week urged Mr Fluxman to jail Worsnop to deter others from committing similar crimes which promote the “worldwide exploitation of vulnerable children”.

The court heard Worsnop “continues to deny the offending” and has expressed no remorse.

But Worsnop’s defence lawyer argued her client should be spared jail and sentenced to a community corrections order, due to his “rapidly declining mental health”.

She told the court Worsnop has been assessed as a “high suicide risk” if he was imprisoned, arguing a community corrections order would enable him to be linked up with services to assist with his homelessness.

Mr Fluxman ultimately agreed, telling the court while Worsnop’s moral culpability was “high”, he believed a term of imprisonment was not appropriate in this case.

Paul Worsnop (left) volunteering at Parkdale Church of Christ in 2011. Picture: Chris Eastman

The grey-haired man, who was described as a “shell of his former self”, sat behind his defence lawyer on Friday, slowly rising when Mr Fluxman asked him to stand.

He was ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid community work and complete a sex offender program.

Worsnop had hired defence barrister Daniel Gurvich KC to defend him in a contested hearing in September which called six witnesses, including his wife.

Mr Gurvich argued there was a “reasonable possibility” another person, associated with the Clayton Church of Christ where he worked, planted the images on the hard drive.

Worsnop denied seeing any images on the device which would constitute child abuse material.

After hearing all the evidence, Mr Fluxman found Worsnop guilty of knowingly possessing child abuse material, rejecting his argument he did not know about the images.

“Nor do I consider … that another person from the church placed the child abuse material there, gave it back to the accused and it lay there unbeknownst to him,” he said.

Worsnop had his teacher’s registration cancelled in January 2022 by the Victorian Institute of Teaching.

He will be a registered sex offender for eight years.