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The former general manager of the Kimberley Health Service Ern Hulbert has been convicted on charges related to child pornography. It was alleged in the District Court in Perth that the retired public servant had downloaded 265,000 images of child pornography. Hulbert was sentenced to 26 months' gaol with a minimum 13 months before he is eligible for parole. The judge rejected his defence that he had been on a journey of sexual enlightenment. The 66-year-old pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing child pornography arising from Operation Auxin, a national crackdown on child porn that led authorities to raid his Duncraig home in September. Formerly based in Derby, Hulbert was a regular visitor to Broome, Kununurra, Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek and Wyndham. |
District Court Judge Allan Fenbury said the case was among the most serious of its kind. The court was told Hulbert had four DVDs containing child pornography and also had a pornographic movie of a boy in various sexual poses. The DVD images, which had been downloaded from the internet and divided into categories and sub-categories, showed children, some believed to be aged under five years, in sexual positions and engaged in sexual acts with adults. Other images simply showed naked children standing alone. Judge Fenbury said some of the seized material was hard-core porn, depicting children suffering ‘gross abuse and exploitation.’ "It is sickening looking at it, and how a man who has had his own children can look at it I struggle to comprehend," Judge Fenbury said. |
He rejected the view of a clinical psychologist, outlined in court by Hulbert's lawyer Mark Andrews, that the images were not downloaded for sexual gratification. "My client's instructions to me and to the psychologist are that his motive for possessing the material was not one of sexual gratification, rather a journey of enlightenment and understanding of his own sexuality and human sexual relationships," Mr Andrews said. He said Hulbert had become withdrawn and isolated after his 2001 conviction for importing and possessing books of child porn fiction and had been denied a sexual relationship following the breakdown of his marriage in 1991. |