A Christchurch man has been jailed for more than three years after being convicted of possessing, distributing, and exporting “extremely disturbing” child sex abuse material.
An investigation into the 23-year-old was launched by the New Zealand Customs Service after it received an alert from the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
The referral said an overseas-based social media platform alleged a New Zealander was exporting “objectionable publications” to the platform.
He was arrested in April and an electronic device was seized after Customs investigators searched his Wigram home.
Forensics specialists found the man had stored child sexual abuse material on a cloud storage account and shared the videos and images via social media and private messages.
Customs said the content featured the abuse of infants and toddlers.
He was sentenced to three years and two months imprisonment at the Christchurch District Court today. He was also placed on the child sex offender register.
Chief Customs Officer – child exploitation operations team Simon Peterson called the material “extremely disturbing”.
“This is not a harmless crime. The man had extremely disturbing files which included depictions of violence and the sexual torture of real children.”
“Our investigators are committed to combating the proliferation of this awful material across our borders, which has a very real, profound and enduring impact on the victimised children.”
