A MAN who was found with about 10,000 child abuse images and videos will not face time in prison.
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The 19-year-old appeared in the Bendigo Magistrates' Court on Friday where he pleaded guilty to possessing and accessing the material, which the prosecution said depicted the "torturous abuse of infants".
The court heard officers from the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team were informed about the man's offending on December 8, 2019.
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Police executed a search warrant at the 19-year-old's Elmore home on September 10 last year and officers seized 10 electronic devices.
Detectives took 40 hours to analyse the devices and found about 10,000 child abuse images and videos.
The material depicted adult men sexually abusing children as young as four months old.
The court heard the children were clearly in pain as they were depicted crying and screaming.
During his interview with police, the man admitted to possessing and accessing the child abuse material through online chat sites.
He told police he downloaded the images so he could look back at the material, and that he never deleted them off his devices.
The man said he only preferred males and that the ages "did not bother" him.
Senior Sergeant Mark Higginbotham told the court the seasoned detectives who viewed the material wrote victim impact statements about the harm they experienced from the images.
But the senior sergeant did not submit the statements to the court because the detectives could not technically be defined as victims.
Defence lawyer Tim McCulloch told the court the 19-year-old accessed the vast majority of the child abuse material when he was underage.
Mr McCulloch said the man had been the alleged victim of online grooming as a young child, which could be seen as a causal link to his offending.
The defence lawyer submitted that given the man's young age and lack of prior convictions, a non-custodial sentence would be within range.
Mr McCulloch said rehabilitation needed to be the greatest focus for the man as he had been deemed a high risk of reoffending.
The defence lawyer said that treatment would be more readily available outside of the prison system.
Senior Sergeant Higginbotham said there was no evidence to support the defence's "overreaching" claims that there was a causal link between the offending and the alleged grooming the man experienced.
The prosecutor said the material depicted the "torturous abuse of infants", which needed to be taken into account in the "difficult" sentencing exercise.
Senior Sergeant Higginbotham told the magistrate while a lengthy community corrections order was within range, he should jail the 19-year-old.
Magistrate Russell Kelly said it was quite obvious the material was "depraved and offensive".
But Mr Kelly said rehabilitation needed to be the greater focus given the man's age and lack of priors.
He ordered the 19-year-old to be assessed for a community corrections order with conditions including offense-specific programs, mental health treatment, and unpaid community work.
The magistrate adjourned the case for sentencing in August. The man's bail was extended to his next court date.
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