Jail for child porn
By Matt Dunn
FOSTER resident Hendricus de Graaf pleaded guilty to possessing hundreds of images of child pornography, when he faced the Wonthaggi Magistrates Court last Friday.
De Graaf will serve three months in prison with a further three months suspended for a period of two years.
He will be placed on the national sex offenders register for eight years.
The self-employed painter and treasurer of the Foster Golf Club, was raided at his home by police on Wednesday, April 8, of this year. A computer was seized, and a number of portable hard drives were taken away for analysis.
The father of two sat stony-faced as the charges were read against him.
“Many people believe this is a victimless crime. People may see it’s you exercising what you see as a way of satisfying your own sexual gratification in the privacy of your own home. That’s not the way the community at large sees this,” magistrate Eddie Batt told de Graaf.
“The people who are making these images are destroying young lives.”
Mr Batt told de Graff that many of the people who came to his court were the victims of child sexual abuse and the effects were devastating.
De Graff’s lawyer told the court his client had done much work for the local community and he would return to the town to
“face the music”.
Two character references were supplied to the court by members of the golf club.
While The Star knew about the circumstances of the case, it was urged to keep quiet until the case went to trial.
Wonthaggi Police’s Senior Constable Paul Burns was part of the sting.
“We had those hard drives analysed, which showed there were about 200 images of child pornography and about 20 video files,” he said.
Snr Const Burns could not talk about the scope of the police investigation, but only that de Graaf was caught in a net that has been cast far and wide.
“It was part of a bigger operation, but it’s not something we can comment on. Basically it’s just information we’ve been given and we then, as far as our investigation goes, seize computers and have them analysed,” he said.
“We executed a warrant on the man’s house, seized his computers and had it confirmed they had child pornography on them.”
Police believe they are closer to making many more arrests as they explore the potential of software that tracks and indentifies the online communications of offenders.
Simply put, the technology shows who is downloading child pornography.
Despite having had access to the software for only a short time, police have already identified thousands of computers in Victoria that have downloaded child pornography.
The computer hits are placed against Google maps to help locate offenders.
Head of the Sexual Crimes Squad, Detective Inspector Glen Davies, told The Star it could not estimate how many people were downloading images of child pornography in Victoria, but said: “There’s a fair prevalence of people involved in accessing and downloading images of child exploitation.
“It’s not a new tool (the software), but it’s been used in Queensland fairly extensively and the US. We’ve just started using it now in Victoria and we’ve got plans to target specific areas, and we’ll be rolling that out in some planned operations fairly shortly,” he said.
“It’s pretty definitive, evidentiary-wise. It allows us to explore the issues further. We’ll take a search warrant and seize the materials and interview the suspects. It’s a really good lead in for us.
“There’s various ways we can look at who suspects are communicating with. This tool will specifically pinpoint people who have downloaded specific images. There’s other methods we use to verify and put together a picture of who people are communicating with.”
Det. Insp. Davies had a clear message for those who traded in child pornography online: “We’ve got extra tools now that help us locate it and if you’ve got the stuff on your computer you could find us knocking on your door.”
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