- 3 8. I will deal with the second basis of the appellant’s appeal first. The health difficulties of the appellant’s parents are unfortunate but in my view, they are not of the degree which would have warranted the magistrate’s consideration on humanitarian grounds. Presumably that is why they were not advanced before him. 9. In any event, even if they had been of such a serious nature or degree so as to warrant such consideration, they were not advanced before the magistrate at the time of sentencing. In my view, an appellate court would be slow to give merit to such a ground of appeal without good reason being shown as to why, as mitigation, these matters were not put before the magistrate. No such good reason has been put before me today. 10. In short, I am quite satisfied there is no merit in this ground. 11. The further basis advanced for this appeal is that the sentence was too severe. The maximum custodial penalty for this offence is three years’ imprisonment. The learned magistrate adopted a starting point of 30 months’ imprisonment. Counsel for the appellant argued that was too high. 12. In my view, that was not too high. Counsel suggested that there were worst case scenarios imaginable for this sort of offence. No doubt that is true. There always are. But as the learned magistrate said in his reasons for sentence : “ The material which I considered to be at or near to the worst case, involved images which could only appeal to the sickest members of our community.