Rockhampton’s Adam Troy Johns jailed for possessing child abuse material

A Queensland man previously jailed for possessing more than 43,000 of child sex abuse material has been caught accessing the grotesque material only one year after his release from prison.

A man has been sentenced to possession of child exploitation material.

A Central Queensland man previously jailed for possessing more than 43,000 of child sex abuse material has been busted accessing the grotesque material only one year after his release from prison, a court has heard.

Adam Troy Johns, 48, was sentenced in 2017 for possessing the “vast collection” of child exploitation material and was added to the Child Protection Offender Register in Queensland, placing reporting requirements upon him.

Commonwealth prosecutor Dominic Nguyen said Queensland Police Service officers attended Johns’ Rockhampton address on August 5, 2022, for a compliance check and device inspection.

He said they found two mobile phones and two computers belonging to Johns with one computer showing he had accessed child abuse material six times on that device since April 7, 2019, including an autosave file titled Russian Lolita and another two files saved in September 2019, one titled ‘hot young teen strips rude’.

Mr Nguyen said one of the videos located was of an adult male chasing a girl aged 13 to 14 along a beach before raping her.

He said other videos depicted men having oral and vaginal sex with children, while others showed topless prepubescent girls and prepubescent boys with their genitals exposed.

Mr Nguyen said there were also files titled ‘pedophile mum and daughter’ and ‘tiny hairless finger bait’.

The court heard Townsville-born Johns had failed to comply with his reporting obligations under the child protection act six times and was sentenced in Rockhampton Magistrates Court for those breaches in July 2021.

He had even been bailed after the August compliance check but he was busted reoffending in December, accessing child abuse material between September 14, 2022 and October 1, 2022.

Judge Jeff Clarke said Johns’ 2017 offending involved “a vast collection of child abuse material” with over 43,000 images, including violent penile vaginal rape of young girls.

He said during that sentencing proceedings, Johns told the court he had stopped accessing such material and specifically named a file sharing program used in 2017 and recent offences.

Defence barrister Maree Willey said her client, who was single and had no children, finished Year 12 at Mareeba State High School, west of Cairns, and had worked in various jobs, from fruit-picking to house painting, hospitality and landscaping.

Johns was sentenced to 2.5 years prison on May 15, 2017, with the sentence suspended after he served 10 months and a three-year operational period, seeing Johns released from prison in mid-March 2018.

The first three offences Johns committed starting in April 2019 breached that suspended sentence.

“You were not forthcoming with admissions about your obvious sexual attraction to material that any right-minded person would find thoroughly and utterly disgusting,” Judge Clarke said.

“The prospects for reform and rehabilitation seem to me to be lost.”

Johns pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child abuse material and three of using a carriage service to access child abuse material.

Judge Clarke ordered the remainder 20 months prison of the suspended sentence from the 2017 sentence be activated in full.

He also sentenced Johns to three years prison for the first period of possessing child abuse material, declared 528 days presentence custody as time already served with parole eligibility from June 2, 2024.

Judge Clarke further ordered a 4.5 year head sentence for the remaining offences, with a start date of when he was first taken into custody for these offences on December 2, 2022, and ordered a non-parole period of 18 months.

Originally published as Rockhampton’s Adam Troy Johns jailed for possessing child abuse material