STATE OF TASMANIA v DERICK COOK 25 FEBRUARY 2020
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BLOW CJ
Mr Cook has pleaded guilty to charges of accessing, possessing and distributing child exploitation material. As a result of information received from Queensland, police officers searched his home in Wynyard in August 2018 and seized a computer tower on which child exploitation images were found. They subsequently found a total of 1697 prohibited child exploitation images, but no child exploitation videos. Some of the images were duplicates. They were categorised according to a classification system that is routinely used in these cases. Mr Cook had only two images in the worst category – Category 5. That category relates to images depicting sadism, bestiality or child abuse. Ignoring duplicates, there were 289 images in Category 4 which involves penetrative sexual activity between children or with adults; 158 in Category 3, which concerns non-penetrative sexual activity between children and adults; 217 in Category 2, which involves non-penetrative activity and children only; and 900 in Category 1, which does not involve any sexual activity.
Mr Cook was very co-operative with the police. He took part in an interview in April 2019, made substantial admissions, and provided helpful information that the police would not otherwise have obtained. He admitted obtaining images from a number of sources, including a Russian photo sharing website. He admitted distributing images from his phone. He admitted using the internet to send another person an image of a young boy with an erect penis in June 2018. He sent at least 320 images to other people at about that time.
Mr Cook is now 56 years old. He is married. He and his wife have three adult children. He has no prior convictions. He has a good employment history, although he has been unemployed for the last four months. He was extremely co-operative with the police. He pleaded guilty at a very early stage. He is very remorseful. He began looking at child pornography as a result of having an unusual interest in female underwear. He has sought professional assistance. He accepts that children suffer as a result of people like him taking an interest in the sorts of material that he collected and distributed. He received no payment for any of the images that he sent to others, and had no direct contact with any of the photographed children.
In my view the only appropriate sentence in this case is a sentence of imprisonment. Because of the mitigating circumstances I have mentioned, particularly his co-operation with the police, I will suspend most of that sentence.
Derick Cook, I convict you and sentence you to nine months’ imprisonment with effect from 12 February 2020. I suspend six months of that sentence on condition that you commit no offence punishable by imprisonment within 18 months after your release from prison. I order that the Registrar appointed under s 42 of the Community Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2005 place your name on the register under that Act, and that you comply with the reporting obligations under that Act for five years from today.