Michael Thomas: Launceston man jailed for child abuse stash

A suspended sentence in 2018 for possessing a revolting stash of child exploitation material did not stop a Tasmanian man, who has now been jailed after downloading thousands more files.

West Launceston man Michael John Thomas, 68. Picture: Facebook

A suspended sentence in 2018 for possessing a revolting stash of child exploitation material did not stop a Tasmanian man, who has now been jailed after downloading thousands more files.

West Launceston man Michael John Thomas, 68, was sentenced in Launceston Magistrates Court on Friday to 10 months’ imprisonment. He will be eligible for parole after serving six months.

Magistrate Ken Stanton backdated the sentence to January 27, when Thomas went into custody following his plea of guilty to a count of possessing child exploitation material.

The court was told Thomas, a father-of-two whose marriage dissolved due to the current offending, was the subject of a search warrant on September 27, 2021.

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Police seized a USB stick, a computer and two hard drives. On the devices, they discovered “thousands” of images and videos, all of which were computer generated but “very realistic,” such that it was “difficult to distinguish between generated and actual humans,” Mr Stanton said.

The material featured “torture, abduction, bondage and rape” involving adults and pre-pubescent children.

Thomas had curated the material on the USB stick, organising it into folders, Mr Stanton said.

It was “degraded material, used to gratify your sexual urges,” Mr Stanton told the court.

The material was downloaded from June 2017 onwards. On May 15, 2017, Justice Robert Pearce sentenced Thomas to 11 months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended, for similar offending. On that occasion, there was a lesser amount of material but it depicted real children.

Mr Stanton told the court that Thomas’ previous offending related to material accessed and downloaded between early 2017 and his arrest on May 31, 2017, meaning Thomas began accessing the current material almost immediately after he was previously charged and bailed.

The court was told Thomas did not believe the current material to be illegal, being that it was computer generated.

Mr Stanton said Thomas had a “longstanding... perverted sexual interest” in children and believed his rehabilitation would be “difficult and unlikely”.

Originally published as Michael Thomas: Launceston man jailed for child abuse stash