A 61-year-old former teacher and parliamentary hopeful was jailed for two-and-half years today on child pornography charges.
Malcolm Albert Spark was found guilty by a jury after a three-day trial on 10 charges of making an objectionable publication, and 14 charges of knowingly possessing an objectionable publication.
He stood unsuccessfully in the Waimakariri electorate as an ACT NZ candidate in 1999. He was also on the party list, at No 41.
The prosecution said that Spark took part in on-line chats with girls aged from nine to 15 in 2005, which led to him obtaining images which he put with a summary of what he had learned about the girls during the chats, the Christchurch Court News website reported.
The case came to light after the mother of a North Island 12-year-old girl intercepted a photograph of the man's erect penis, sent over the internet.
The man initiated contact with the girl through her social networking web page when she was 11.
The mother found chat conversations that seemed to be sexual, contacted Internal Affairs, then operated her daughter's Zorpia profile, recording the conversations and the source's electronic address.
Inquiries with United States Customs showed a 12-year-old American girl received the same material personally.
More than 6000 chat contacts were found on the man's computer, many with file names suggesting they were young girls.
Chat logs showed Spark masturbated while chatting with young girls or looking at their pictures.
One of the seized diskettes contained eight stories written by the defendant in 1999, describing sexual acts between an adult male and girls aged 10 and 12.
Passing sentence in Christchurch District Court today, Judge David Saunder said Spark's pre-sentence report said that he believed he was not harming anyone, and that society had got things wrong.
Defence counsel Sonia Vidal said the victim impact report from an 11-year-old and her mother made sorry reading.
But she said it was not established from the computer files that any activities took place, only that they had been described, so it was less serious.
There was no commerciality, just private thoughts and texts between people in a chat room.
However' Judge Saunders said there was a link between obsession and potential for harm.
It was fantasy talk, and Spark had lost sight of reality with the highly objectionable material.
