Shannon Brereton, 35, pleaded guilty in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court to four counts of knowingly possessing child abuse material, three of distributing child abuse material and two of accessing child abuse material.
Police found 870 child abuse files of pre-pubescent children on his phone, and 2064 illegal content files of children when they searched his home in January 2023.
A SanDisk card found at his home contained 1655 files of child abuse material and 4427 of other illegal child content.
Of these, 5460 were unique to the device.
A USB at his house held one child abuse video.
He had several conversations on two cloud media sites where he exchanged child abuse files with seven other users between November 2022 and January 2023.
On another cloud-based service that stores and shares links, he downloaded 83 videos of real pre-pubescent children and another 18 videos of illegal content of children.
On yet another social media account, he had 29 child abuse files.
His DropBox included 4109 child abuse files.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Caitlin McLeod told the court the videos and pictures included naked children, through to children engaging in sexual acts.
Some were as young as toddlers.
The court was told that when interviewed by police, Brereton told them that he “didn’t really watch” the videos and photos but just sent them on to others or “people would stop chatting”.
Brereton’s defence solicitor Jacob Button clarified this, saying his client “would view” what was sent to him “but did not get any sexual gratification” and would then pass them on to others.
Mr Button said Brereton had engaged with a psychologist since being charged with the offences, and asked that he be given a sentence that combined prison with a community-based order.
The prosecutor, however, asked that he be jailed, with a parole period set.
The magistrate ordered that a psychological assessment be done on Brereton before he next appears in January.
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