By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
A MIDDLE-AGED Narre Warren South man using the online pseudonyms ‘Kinky Jim’ and ‘Uncle Jim’ has been spared jail for “lower end” child pornography offences.
James King, 43, downloaded and shared scores of child-exploitation images with online ‘friends’ on Yahoo Messenger and Flickr apps, a court was told on Monday 28 September.
King told police he used ‘Kinky’ as a nom-de-plume because it was “better than ‘perverted’”, the court heard.
Police prosecutor Senior Constable Glenn Horman said King claimed that he engaged in cyber-sex while living in New South Wales and asked his online contacts for images of girls as young as 13.
King claimed he didn’t know these contacts, although they were listed on his Yahoo “friends list”, Sen Const Horman said.
King hid the images in his bowling bag out of “shame” and in the knowledge that they were illegal.
After he moved to Narre Warren in 2013, King uploaded the images on Flikr – with privacy settings allowing viewing by “friends and family”, the court was told.
Dandenong police’s Sexual Offence Crime Investigation Team uncovered 145 illegal images on USB sticks and a desktop computer during a raid on King and his partner’s home in September 2014.
Most images – all but four – were classified at the lowest category one.
King admitted to police that he had an “unhealthy interest” in young girls and had made an agreement with his partner not to view the images again.
King’s lawyer said the accused felt some shame and was being intensively psychologically counselled.
“He’s done whatever he can do to correct the problem.
“If he’s not rehabilitated at this stage, he’s well on the way towards it.”
The lawyer said King had never “acted out” his predilection outside of his home, but his actions had “created a market”.
The accused grew up at various times with his strict disciplinarian father on a NSW farm and with his separated mother in Sydney, his lawyer said.
“He didn’t enjoy the things people enjoy in their teenage years.”
After leaving school he lived and worked on limited “pocket money” on his father’s farm with “little contact with ladies his age”.
“It follows he had no social skills either,” King’s lawyer told the court.
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen said the “starting point for child pornography is jail” noting it involved exploiting young people “either here or in Third World countries”.
King had a high moral culpability for exhibiting and transmitting the images, he said.
Mr Vandersteen also took into account the absence of prior convictions, King’s admissions, the quantity and the low-category material.
He said King was set to be put on a community-based order of up to two years, including unpaid work, supervision, mental health treatment and a sex offender’s program.
King was bailed until 29 September for a community corrections assessment.
