On 10 Feb, a 40-year-old man received a jail term of nearly two years’ as well as two strokes of the cane for possessing more than 8,000 child porn photos and videos.
Lin Zhenyang, an accountant, had pleaded guilty to the one count of possessing child abuse material.
According to The Straits Times (ST), Lin began downloading pornography on the shared family computer at the age of 16.
In 2021, he started joining Telegram groups, and it was from these groups that he would begin downloading porn in bulk.
He was later found to be a member of 500 groups at the time of his arrest — the maximum number for a non-paying user.
Source: Adem AY on Unsplash, for illustration purposes only
It is unclear how many of these groups he downloaded porn from.
Every morning before work, Lin would download the pornographic material from Telegram into his personal hard drives.
He would then skim through the downloaded media after work, watching some of them.
ST reported that he had used the explicit media to cope with stress in his life.
Source: Ivan Mudruk on Canva, for illustration purposes only
On 15 Oct 2021, acting on information received, according to CNA, the police raided Lin’s family home and arrested him. They seized two personal hard drives, a phone, and a computer.
Investigations revealed over 20 terabytes (20 trillion bytes) of sexually explicit materials in his possession.
These included 1,136 videos and 7,277 images of child sexual abuse. Some victims were as young as three months old.
Another 12,896 explicit films made up the rest of his collection.
This means the videos and photos containing child abuse material made up nearly 40 per cent of the total amount of obscene material in his possession.
The prosecution, in light of the fact that Lin had pleaded guilty, had sought 23 to 25 months in jail and two to three strokes of the cane.
In mitigation, Lin’s lawyers highlighted his difficulty in social interactions and perceived unfair treatment at work.
Due to his stress, he turned to alcohol and pornography.
The defence alleged that Lin did not purposely search for or consume child porn.
They pointed out that their client had around 10,000 hours of videos, “more than he could ever watch”, and claimed that the child abuse media stayed in his collection out of indifference.
His lawyers said Lin was himself “flabbergasted at the quantity of child abuse material he had amassed”.
Due to these factors, they argued for 19 to 21 months in prison and a maximum of two strokes of the cane.
However, the prosecution pointed out that the child porn formed a significant portion of his possessed material.
Lin also admitted to finding sexual photos and videos involving children within his collection but did not delete them.
The judge eventually sentenced Lin to 23 months’ jail and two strokes of the cane.
Those convicted of possessing or gaining access to child abuse material can be jailed for up to five years, and fined or caned.
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Featured image by MS News.
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