Court: Trial Continues For Child Porn Charges
[Written by Don Burgess]
A Devonshire man said with a “clear conscience” that he did not access child pornography which was found on laptop under his bed.
The Devonshire man is accused of seven counts of accessing child pornography images and videos. The prosecution claims that 1,230 pictures and videos were accessed. The 30-year old man has denied all the charges.
The man allegedly accessed the images and videos on dates unknown between April 10, 2010, and March 11, 2015. The photos and videos include pre-and post-pubescent children which were accessed from peer-to-peer sharing sites.
The man lives in the same house with his mother and father.
The man told the court he put the laptop under his bed sometime in November 2014 after it wouldn’t work any longer. The defendant told the four-man, eight-woman jury he plugged the power cord in, waited five or six seconds to show any life, and then turned it off when it appeared not to be working.
He told the court that prior to it ending up under his bed that the laptop was in the kitchen and besides himself, “almost anybody who came over the house” had access to the laptop.
The defendant added that one of his “best friends” came over to the house for “the better part of 2010” to use it for internet banking. The man said he then lent the laptop to his friend who took for an unspecified time from the late 2010 to the first part of 2011 until he could get his own computer.
The defendant said he decided to lend the laptop “because he had just moved back from Canada.”
Under cross-examination from the Crown, the defendant gave his friend’s last name, and said he later returned to Canada in 2013 or 2014 but “he has been back and forth” since then. He added he is still in contact with his friend through email, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram direct messages.
The man admitted watching “regular adult porn” on the laptop. The man denied he ever knowingly accessed child porn.
He told the court, “I can say with a clear conscience and with certainty, it was not me that accessed these materials. I have never done so. I have zero interest in or desire in the suffering of children nor would I ever take pleasure in viewing the sexual abuse or torture of a child.”
Under cross examination by the Crown he said he did not have WiFi access in his room, so he watched the adult porn in the family den.
The defendant said he used the laptop, which was named after the man [i.e. the MansfirstnamePC], primarily for iTunes to create playlists for his iPod.
He admitted using a peer-to-peer network to download movies. He would later use that network to download other movies. He had to download a programme in order to be able to get the movie.
The Devonshire man said he didn’t know how any of the other four peer-to-peer networks were downloaded onto the laptop, and further, he didn’t go on those networks nor search for files on them.
The defendant added he had never created any file folders on his computers and when he did download anything like his personal photos, he just let them go where the computer directed it.
He said that he put his personal pictures on the laptop because he had “the bad habit of losing or destroying” his phones and wanted to make sure he had copies of his photos saved.
The man added he never personally selected where those photos of himself went on his laptop but just took the default location the computer selected.
Those pictures went into a folder that included explicit child pornography that were dated from September 9, 2012. The man said he “definitely did not” know those images were on the laptop.
The trial continues.
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