- 5 15.
Counsel for the appellant argued that the facts of Hiroyuki
Takeda’s case were more extreme than those of the present case as the
former case involved necrophilia. I do not think a ranking of this sort is
practical or desirable.
16.
Suffice it to say that the learned magistrate, in the present case,
cannot be criticized when he said the material before him was regarded by
him as being “at or near to the worst case”. He was entitled on the
material before him to arrive at that finding of fact.
17.
In my judgment, the learned magistrate, in adopting a starting
point of sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment, acted properly, given the
serious nature of this offence.
18.
In my view, this sort of offence must involve the offender
being aware that he is a participant in and a contributor to an industry that
involves the corruption of children. The production and publication of
this sort of material is now made much easier to do with impunity since the
inception of the internet and undermines our society’s fundamental values.
19.
The existence of such an industry is incomprehensible to
almost all of us. What is not incomprehensible is that for the protection
of children in our society, people caught participating in the spread or
production of this sort of material must be punished in a way that deters
both them and others from these offences.
20.
In my judgment, any substantial quantity of material of this
sort involving children, even in the possession of a first offender, would