A Bega man has pleaded guilty to downloading thousands of photos and videos of child abuse material and storing them across several devices and hard drives at his home.
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Benjamin Hay entered guilty pleas to two counts of producing child abuse material and seven counts of possessing child abuse material, in Bega Local Court on Tuesday, November 24
The 38-year-old did not appear in person to enter the pleas, as his lawyer Jennifer Chalker said he had a medical appointment, but she entered the pleas on his behalf.
Court documents tabled by the prosecution outline police from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad's Child Exploitation Unit used a Commonwealth search warrant to examine Hay's home in May this year, where he allegedly told police he was the owner and sole user of a number of electronic devices in his house, including a mobile phone, laptop and hard drives.
Hay was arrested after police examined his mobile phone and allegedly discovered a number of photos and videos showing child abuse material downloaded from the internet.
Police said all the devices were forensically examined and numerous items of category one and two child abuse material were allegedly found.
In total, prosecutors alleged the mobile phone had 25 images and six videos of child abuse material, the laptop 843 images and four videos, and other hard drives allegedly contained an additional 9860 images and 157 videos, including 86 videos that were described by the police as to be of "an extremely egregious nature".
Police alleged that a search of another hard drive containing 138,626 images and 5995 videos found the majority appeared to be of child abuse material.
In addition, police alleged there were 65 images found across the laptop and a hard drive that had been altered to reflect child abuse material, and these altered images contained the watermark "faked by the bendemonator", which police said was an alias used by Hay.
In Bega Local Court on Tuesday, Ms Chalker said Hay was not previously known to police and asked for an adjournment to obtain subjective material, particularly medical material, ahead of sentencing.
Magistrate Doug Dick adjourned the matter for sentencing to December 15 and said bail was to continue.
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Albert McKnight
Journalist at Bega District News.
Journalist at Bega District News.
