A 35-year-old man has been jailed for three years and six months following a Customs investigation into the exportation and distribution of child sexual abuse material.
He was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court today and convicted for making, possessing, distributing and exporting objectionable material that depicted the sexual abuse of children, computer-generated child sexual abuse, and files which depicted bestiality, defecation, rape and torture. He has been placed on the child sex offender register.
In June 2024, Customs received reports from the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which had identified a New Zealand man allegedly uploading material depicting the sexual abuse of children to social media sites.
Customs investigators in the Child Exploitation Operations Team (CEOT) identified the offender and executed a search warrant at his residential address in Christchurch on 2 July 2024. During the warrant, they found him in possession of 1,345 objectionable publications, over 600 of which showed real children being sexually abused.
He was arrested onsite for exporting objectionable publications, and Customs seized a total of 78 electronic devices for forensic examination, which identified further offending.
Chief Customs Officer - Child Exploitation Operations Team, Simon Peterson, says not only did this man have images and videos of distressing sexual abuse of real children, but he also had hyper-realistic computer-generated videos of children being abused.
"The spread of computer-generated and AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery is of real concern but, as this case shows, it is a crime which Customs takes seriously and that we will investigate and prosecute."
"This man has been held accountable for his crimes and will now spend the next three-and-a-half years in prison."
If you have concerns or suspicions about someone who may be trading in or producing child sexual abuse images or videos, contact Customs confidentially on 0800 WE PROTECT (0800 937 768) or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. If you are, or know of, someone who is at risk or being abused, contact the Police immediately.
