Sunshine Coast child abuse criminals guilty of child porn or grooming charges
A Nambour man caught red-handed in the act of child grooming and a Tanawha father found with 500 child exploitation videos and 1523 photos are among the Sunshine Coast online child abuse offenders.. Full list. GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING
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With an ever-evolving digital world at the fingertips of a tech savvy youth, online safety is a growing concern among parents and authorities.
The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation reported that the increase of young people accessing the internet corresponded to an upward trend of cases in child exploitation in 2020.
In an Australian Government report, published in January, the ACCCE revealed public tip-offs about online child sexual exploitation material more than doubled, up 122 per cent, during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns of April-June 2020.
In the 2019–20 financial year, the ACCCE Child Protection Triage Unit received more than 21,000 reports which was an increase from more than 14,000 reports the previous year.
The organisation lists online child sexual exploitation including grooming, live streaming, consuming child sexual abuse material, and coercing and blackmailing children for sexual purposes.
Here are 10 Sunshine Coast people guilty for child porn or grooming charges:
Hundreds of child abuse videos on Kenneth Howard Simpson’s phone
Hundreds of graphic videos and photos of adults sexually abusing and raping children were found on the Tanawha dad’s phone.
Police discovered Kenneth Howard Simpson’s criminality went beyond meth dealing when they found 500 child exploitation videos and 1523 photos during a search of his Sunshine Coast home.
The unlicensed 34-year-old immediately drove to his Tanawha residence when he heard police wanted to search his devices on September 5, 2018.
The father of two faced Maroochydore District Court in August last year.
Crown prosecutor Will Slack said 255 photos and 311 videos came under Category 4 of the Oliver scale.
A forensic examination of Simpson‘s phone found he had downloaded the content from the internet.
He admitted he owned the phone but initially denied searching for, or downloading, child exploitation material.
He pleaded guilty to 17 charges including nine counts of supplying a Schedule 1 dangerous drug, one count of possessing child exploitation material and one count of using a carriage service to access child exploitation material.
Judge John Allen sentenced Simpson to two years in jail suspended for three years after he served six months.
Simpson also received a concurrent two-year jail sentence with release on parole after six months on the condition he enter into a $1000 good behaviour bond.
He was disqualified from driving for six months.
Simpson will be released on parole on February 24
Child groomer Phillip Matthew Carberry met by police instead of girl, 13
The Nambour man thought he was meeting a 13-year-old girl at a Coast coffee shop when he was instead met by police.
The Maroochydore District Court heard in May last year that a police officer had been posing as the teenager who Phillip Matthew Carberry thought he was grooming over Facebook Messenger and text.
Crown prosecutor Will Slack told the court that Carberry had the intent to “procure her to engage in sexual conduct with him”.
“This culminated in him arranging to meet her at Zarraffa’s Coffee at Maroochydore where he was ultimately arrested by police,” Mr Slack said.
Carberry pleaded guilty to one count of grooming a child under 16 years with intent to expose to indecent matter and one count of using the internet to procure a child under 16 years and intentionally going to meet them.
He was sentenced to 18 months‘ imprisonment, suspended for two years.
He was also given two years’ probation.
A conviction was recorded.
Bradley Philip Moffitt Marks convicted for possessing and making child exploitation material
Maroochydore District Court heard in June that the Palmview man had 14 images of different naked children, including five photos he’d taken of a naked 10-year-old girl.
He pleaded guilty to making and possessing child exploitation material, using a carriage service to transmit child abuse material and failing to comply with a reporting condition.
The court heard police arrested Marks on June 30, 2020, after an investigation into him possessing photos of naked children.
Judge Glen Cash said the father of two had taken the pictures of the girl through a gap in a fence that looked through to the child’s bedroom.
The other photos were of naked children not known to Marks.
Marks, who has been held in custody since his arrest, was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail.
He will be eligible for parole in October, 16 months after his initial arrest.
Raid finds 86k child porn images at Andrew Grant Karsten’s home
Children as young as two years old were seen among 86,000 child porn images police found during a raid of Karsten’s Landsborough home in November 2018.
Police also found 677 pornographic videos of children.
Crown prosecutor Will Slack said Karsten, 55, had material of children aged between two and 17.
The court heard that Karsten told police “You name it, I’ve got it. I’m guilty”.
He pleaded guilty at Maroochydore District Court in June last year.
Defence lawyer Chris Lumme said Karsten suffered from severe social anxiety, depression and a learning disorder with impairment in reading and writing.
“He describes himself as being addicted, by inference to downloading the material, and he also admitted that he’d been downloading the material for four or five years in total.”
He was sentenced to two years in jail, suspended for an operational period of three years.
Helpless toddler among 52 files on Paul Max McLaren Grewar’s computer
A video of a toddler screaming as they were raped was one of 52 child abuse files found on the 21-year-old’s computer.
He faced Maroochydore District Court in October last year.
The court heard he used BitTorrent software over three weeks in 2019 to download the photos and videos of children being raped and abused.
Grewar gave police the passwords to his devices when they raided his Ilkley home on April 7 in 2020.
He admitted to viewing 52 files relating to child abuse before moving them to the recycle bin.
He pleaded guilty to one count of using a carriage service to access child exploitation material.
Defence barrister Simon Lewis said his client had a disconnect between the content he was viewing and the harm that was being done to the children.
Grewar was sentenced to nine months in jail with immediate release on the condition he agreed to a $1000 good behaviour bond.
Child porn offender Rhys Jaden Friend’s Snapchat account lands him back in court
A 20-year-old man who was caught with more than 2000 images and videos of child pornography breached the terms of his suspended sentence by failing to report a new Snapchat account on time.
Rhys Jaden Friend was sentenced in September last year after pleading guilty to possessing and distributing child-exploitation material, the Maroochydore District Court heard in May.
He was sentenced to three years’ probation for possessing child-exploitation material and was given one year in jail, wholly suspended for three years for distributing child-exploitation material.
A conviction was recorded for the distribution of the material but not the possessing.
Friend, who is a reportable offender under the Child Protection Act, found himself back before the court in May after breaching the suspended sentence.
Crown prosecutor Masoumi said Friend was charged with the breach after he failed to tell the registry about a new Snapchat account within seven days, as per his reporting conditions.
She said he opened a new account on December 2 and did not report the account until January 4.
Daniel John Blyth breaches child porn sentence when caught with kids
A young man previously convicted for distributing and possessing child porn failed to tell police he had created online profiles and associated with children.
Daniel John Blyth, 26, appeared in Maroochydore District Court in May after breaching a suspended sentence on 12 separate occasions.
Blyth was sentenced in 2016 after he uploaded to Facebook an image of two pre-pubescent girls sexually posing in a bathtub.
He had also been found in possession of more than 800 unique images of child sexual exploitation.
He was given a suspended sentence, which expired in December 2017.
However, Blyth was subsequently convicted for possessing more child sexual material, including videos.
He was sentenced in 2019 to two years and three months in jail, to serve four months.
Blyth’s home was raided by police in November last year.
Officers discovered he had failed to report five online profiles to social media sites, including Tinder and Twitch.
Police also discovered Blyth had failed to inform officers he’d attended social gatherings late last year where children were present.
He was sentenced in Maroochydore Magistrates Court on February 10 for those charges to 12 months in jail and was given immediate parole.
The breaches dating back to 2016 and 2018 were found proven but no action was taken, the court heard.
Judge Gary Long sentenced Blyth to four months in prison in relation to the breaches of the 2019 suspended sentence.
Blyth will be eligible for parole on September 17.
Jason Scott Hastie planned to have sex with teen after erotic chat
A Coast father whose “sexual frustration” led him to start an erotic conversation with a teen girl was found guilty of child-grooming offences at Maroochydore District Court.
Jason Scott Hastie planned to meet an undercover police officer, who he believed was a 14-year-old girl, after having online sexual conversations with her between December 28, 2019 and January 16, last year.
The Dulong resident pleaded not guilty in April to using the internet to procure children under 16 and grooming a child under 16 years with intent to expose to indecent matter.
During a two-day trial a jury heard how Mr Hastie had sexual conversations with the girl over a number of social media platforms.
He was found guilty on April 30 this year of both offences.
Judge Ken Barlow sentenced him to an 18-month prison sentence to be suspended for two years after six months.
Hastie also pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child-exploitation material after a photo of a young girl performing oral sex on an adult male was found on his phone on January 15, last year.
Hastie will be subject to a probation order for 18 months after his release.
He will be a reportable offender under the Child Protection Act for five years.
Ian Bloomer photoshops wife into child sex abuse images
A 70-year-old Sunshine Coast man has avoided jail time after more than 800 child-exploitation images were found on his computer.
Ian Bloomer, 70, was sentenced in Maroochydore District Court on February 5 after pleading guilty to possessing child-exploitation material, using a carriage service to access child-pornography material, using a carriage service to make available child-pornography material and making child-exploitation material.
Crown prosecutor William Slack said in July 2019 police identified a computer registered to Bloomer had been used to download hundreds of child-exploitation images, many depicting “naked, pre-pubescent girls in various poses, with a focus on their genitals”.
Police searched Bloomer’s Forest Glen home on July 19, 2019 and found more than 881 child-exploitation images, of which 589 were unique, on his computers.
Two “homemade” child-exploitation images were also found on a computer, and Mr Slack said Bloomer had ”essentially Photoshopped” images of his wife into the material.
Judge Glen Cash sentenced Bloomer to two years in prison for possessing child-exploitation material, and eight months for making child-exploitation material, immediately suspended for two years.
For using a carriage service to download and make available the child-exploitation material, Judge Cash sentenced him to two years each, to be served concurrently, with immediate release on a $1000 good behaviour bond.
Woman finds 100s of child porn photos on partner Shane Malcolm Watson’s iPad
A Queensland father who was busted with hundreds of child-porn photos told police he only made the “stupid mistake” when he was high on meth, a court heard.
Hundreds of child-exploitation images were found on Shane Malcolm Watson’s devices when police searched his Mooloolaba house.
The Maroochydore District Court heard Watson’s partner was looking through his iPad when she found the concerning images on July 5, 2019.
The court heard 118 accessible photos and 639 inaccessible images, all in Category 1 were found on Watson’s devices.
Watson pleaded guilty in Maroochydore District Court in October last year to possessing child-exploitation material.
Watson was sentenced to one year in jail, wholly suspended for two years.
*For 24-hour sexual violence support call the national hotline 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or MensLine on 1800 600 636.
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