Burnett man with thousands of child porn images sent to jail

A South Burnett man who was caught with nearly 3000 images of child exploitation material including naked toddlers has been sent to prison.

A South Burnett man has been sent to jail for posessing child exploiation material. (Photo: File)

A SOUTH Burnett man has been sentenced to two years and nine months imprisonment after police found him in possession of thousands of child exploitation images.

While already serving a twelve month suspended prison sentence for possessing child exploitation material from April 2019, Steven Graham Wigg pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child exploitation material at Kingaroy District Court on August 19.

On February 12, 2020 police executed a search warrant in relation to a drug offence, seizing a phone from Wigg's residence.

Police re-attended the address with another warrant in relation to child exploitation material, seizing a further two devices.

Between the three devices there was 2831 child exploitation images.

537 of those images were unique and 140 of those unique images fell within category one of the Interpol baseline.

Majority of them were of female children up to 12 years old, with legs pulled apart showing their genitalia.

About 15 of them were female children up to 12 years old also being penetrated by an adult penis and or being ejaculated on.

There were at least 10 images of female toddlers also with their legs pulled apart exposing their genitalia.

Two of those images showed the tip of an adult penis rubbed against the toddler's vagina.

 Three hundred and ninety-seven of the unique images fell within category 2, other illegal images, and depicted female children from toddlers to approximately 12 years old, posing naked, either solo or in groups of other naked children, or posing naked with adult males and females.

Her honour, judge Nicole Kefford said the maximum penalty for possessing child exploitation material is 14 years imprisonment.

"At the time of your offending, you were eight months into an operational period of two years for a suspended sentence of 12 months imposed by his Honour Judge Long here in the Kingaroy District Court on 24 April 2019 for the exact same nature of offence, possessing child exploitation material," Judge Kefford said.

"You are a mature man and, self-evidently, have a relevant criminal history which includes that offence of possessing child exploitation material.

"You were sentenced on that occasion on the basis that the devices were left behind by someone else, and you had simply accessed them, but you didn't report them as containing child exploitation material, didn't report them to the police, nor did you destroy the images."

Wigg responded to the judge by saying "there was only ever a small amount of them actually ever viewed and I didn't split them off files."

Judge Kefford told the court when Wigg was arrested and taken into custody he participated in an interview, however made no admissions to the offence and lied to police.

"On 17 February, you participated in another record of interview at your request where you made some admissions to the offending, but attempted to minimise your offending," Judge Kefford said.

"You gave excuses about having got the images when you were actually searching for different images. You made an excuse that you were trying to upset your partner by downloading the images, and various other excuses.

"The sentence proceeds on the basis that you knowingly downloaded child exploitation material to all three devices over a period of time for your own perverted motivations, and the Crown does not accept that you tried or didn't know how to delete a folder, even though you knew how to create a folder."

"The offending is serious offending. This is not a victimless crime, a matter that you are well aware of, having been told that by his Honour Judge Long on the previous occasion when you were sentenced for this type of offending."

For the beach of a suspended sentence of 12 months imposed at Kingaroy District Court on 24 April 2019, Judge Kefford found Wigg to be convicted of an offence punishable by imprisonment committed during the operational period of the suspended sentence.

As a result Wigg will serve the whole of the suspended imprisonment.

In respect to the indictment charging Wigg with possessing child exploitation material dealt with in August, he was ordered to be imprisoned for a period of one year and nine months, eligible for parole on 12 January 2021.

Wigg's parole date will reflect one-third of the effect of the cumulative sentence being a cumulative period of two years nine months, a third of that being 11 months.

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