Hobart menswear worker with 43,000 child abuse images says he was ‘collecting’ them

A Hobart man nabbed with 43,000 child exploitation images tried to convince the courts he wasn’t sexually interested in children, but was simply an avid collector.

Stacey Wilkins.

HOBART man Stacey Franklin Wilkins had told police he collected child exploitation material like his wife collected tea cups.

The menswear store worker, who was arrested last October with 42,941 abuse material images and 700 videos, tried to deny he had a sexual interest in children, but rather had an “accumulation obsession”.

After all, his protestations of innocent intent had worked before.

In 2012, he was let off without a conviction after he used computers at the State Library of Tasmania to view images of underage girls in swimwear and underwear, convincing the Supreme Court of Tasmania he’d actually been trying to access adult pornography.

This time, Chief Justice Alan Blow wasn’t so lenient, and didn’t believe his claims that he wasn’t sexually interested in children – jailing the father and grandfather for three months.

On Thursday, the 56-year-old appeared in court after pleading guilty to accessing and possessing child exploitation material – before trying to convince the court that he’d never masturbated to the huge amount of material police found under a search warrant.

He admitted on the witness stand, before cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Anna Norton, that he’d told police about the images: “I can appreciate some of them, but some of them I find quite horrific”.

“Some of the earlier material (of children in swimsuits) was photogenic,” he told the court.

“But the further it went, the more repulsed I became.”

He also agreed he’d told police that he collected the material “like (his) wife collected tea cups”.

When being questioned by defence barrister Fabiano Cangelosi, Wilkins said he rarely accessed the material, didn’t masturbate to it and didn’t understand “what led me down that path” of downloading it.

Ms Norton argued Wilkins’ evidence should be disregarded as it was selective and “self-serving”.

“In relation to obsessive behaviour, I’d ask Your Honour to view that with a high degree of scepticism,” she said.

“There’s no evidence of any other collections.”

Chief Justice Blow said it was “implausible” that Wilkins had established his collection “without a substantial degree of sexual interest in children”.

“He sought to explain his conduct on the basis that he had some sort of collection obsession. No doubt he did. But he wasn’t collecting images of butterflies or teacups, he was collecting images and videos depicting sexual activity between adults and children,” he said.

He jailed Wilkins – who had been found unsuitable for a home detention order – for six months, with three months suspended.

Wilkins will also be subject to a 12-month community correction order upon his release, and will have his name recorded on the Community Protection Offender Register for five years.

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