A ``DEPRAVED'' New Town man who wrote about raping, murdering and torturing children was attracted to child pornography because of the status he received as a network administrator, a Supreme Court judge has said.
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Sonny Day, 55, pleaded guilty to 67 child porn charges including accessing child abuse material and publishing seven stories that fantasised about the physical and sexual abuse of an abducted child.
He was sentenced to five years' jail and received a life listing on the sex offenders registry at the Supreme Court in Hobart yesterday.
Day accessed child porn from July 1, 2006 until his arrest on December 1, 2010, and took steps to make his IP address hard to trace.
Australian Federal Police discovered 1971 images and videos of child pornography at his house.
They included 94 videos and 107 images at the very worst end of the Oliver scale which classifies indecent images.
It included four videos and 20 images depicting child abuse.
Four of the images depicted dead toddlers.
``Some of the images included text boxes containing pornographic or abusive comments, including comments describing acts of sadism, torture and murder,'' Justice Alan Blow said.
Police also found a collection of printed stories of a ``very high level of depravity'', as well as stories he had penned, which Justice Blow said ``are in the worst category of child abuse writing and show an extreme level of depravity.''
``In his emails, Mr Day wrote about ideas he had about raping, torturing and murdering children, including babies, together with other offenders, and filming such acts,'' he said.
Justice Blow said that while child porn stories do not harm children in their production, they are ``evil'' because they ``sought to actively encourage depraved and dangerous acts.''
Day told police he had sexual urges toward children he knew and so limited his contact with young children.
He has been in custody since breaching his bail on Christmas Day 2010 by loitering near children at a park in Sandy Bay.
He has been assaulted twice in prison.
Day will be eligible for parole in June 2013.