A Greymouth panel beater who downloaded more than 110,000 images and 4000 videos exploiting the sexual abuse of young people was yesterday sentenced to three years in jail.
Boyd Mitchell, 54, pleaded guilty in the Greymouth District Court in November to six representative charges of possessing objectionable images and videos.
Yesterday, the court was told Mitchell had since been subject to vigilante attacks, including a recent attempted arson of his car outside his house.
Lawyer Marilyn Gilchrist said there were concerns for Mitchell's safety if his name was published again from ''vigilante action'', as Greymouth was a small place.
However, Judge Tom Gilbert said Mitchell's name was already in the community and suppression was unlikely to have much effect.
The judge did however suppress details of the explicit content of the material, including the ages of the children depicted.
The court heard Mitchell had been engaging with the ''unpleasant'' material for about 20 years.
His arrest last year followed a lengthy police investigation and involved the forensic analysis of various devices seized from his home, dating over a 12-year period, from 2012 until early last year.
Between October 2022 and April 2024 alone, Mitchell downloaded more than 100,000 images of child exploitation material.
The earliest cache of objectionable publication contained at least 3000 images, downloaded between 2012 and 2014. The majority had since been deleted, but were recovered using specialist digital forensic software.
In identifying the material located on Mitchell's home laptop, computer and USB devices, police applied United Kingdom sentencing guidelines for its classification into three categories.
A sample of 51 videos were analysed with a run time of 12 hours, which fell into the more serious category.
Mitchell would regularly search for new content and look at the downloaded content -- including on the morning of his arrest.
Ms Gilchrist said Mitchell had been receiving treatment through the Stop programme since his offending was discovered, and he now had a growing understanding of what went on behind the scenes to create the images.
He should be congratulated for the work he had done towards rehabilitation, and hopefully, he would have the opportunity to redeem himself in the community in the future, she said.
She sought a starting point of 14 months' imprisonment with discounts for his guilty plea and good character.
However, Judge Gilbert said the vast collection of child sexual exploitation material amassed on various devices was a ''very serious example of this type of offending''.
He accepted that Mitchell regretted the offending, and now realised he had ''ruined his life''.
Many of his associates had distanced themselves from him, he had lost his job and had threats made against him.
The judge began with a starting point of six years' imprisonment, but halved that, giving full credit for Mitchell's guilty plea, his remorse, and rehabilitative efforts. He added a 5% discount to recognise the vigilante behaviour he had experienced but declined any discount for good character.
''The fact that I'm sending you to prison, in an ironic sense is keeping you safer than if you were to return to your home address,'' Judge Gilbert said.
The three-year sentence meant Mitchell would automatically be entered on the Child Sex Offender Register.
Judge Gilbert also made an order for the destruction of all material from the seized devices.
Police said the demand for child sex abuse images resulted in a continuing cycle of sexual abuse for existing victims, and demands for new victims.
''Any sexual offence involving a child is horrific, but by photographing, filming and distributing images and movies of the abuse, the victim is re-victimised every time their image is viewed on the internet.''
By possessing imagery of child sexual abuse, Mitchell had directly contributed to the further victimisation of those children and fuelled an international demand for such imagery, police said
An estimated 20% of all pornography traded over the internet was child pornography, and from 2013 to 2022, the number of child pornography sites on the internet had increased by 1006%.
