A Southland teacher aide who had child pornography and demonstrated a “concerning desire to escalate” his offending, has been locked up.<\/p>\n
Quade Neil Kaahu Strange, 25, appeared in the Invercargill District Court this afternoon after earlier admitting 26 charges of possessing objectionable material.<\/p>\n
He had his bid for permanent name suppression refused by Judge Russell Walker, who imposed a sentence of 21 months\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Strange was previously employed as an early childhood educator and was a teacher aide at the time of the offending.<\/p>\n
The court heard that Strange communicated via encrypted message with an associate on several occasions between November 19 and December 8.<\/p>\n
In the messages, the defendant asked his associate to send him photos and videos of children being abused and expressed his desire to offend against a child, a police summary said.<\/p>\n
The associate sent the man 49 videos and 44 images.<\/p>\n
An excerpt of the messages was printed as evidence in the summary.<\/p>\n
(Defendant): Hey Hehe can we send more younger stuff on here if you want \u2026<\/p>\n
(Associate): You got some?<\/p>\n
(Defendant): not right this second but i will soon hopefully, what\u2019s the youngest you\u2019ve got?<\/p>\n
After police executed a search warrant this year, the man\u2019s electronic devices were seized and examined by the Police Digital Forensic Unit.<\/p>\n
Of the 93 files received, 77 were deemed objectionable by police.<\/p>\n
They depicted sexual acts with young children including a baby, a toddler and adults, the summary said.<\/p>\n
In another excerpt of the messages between the pair, the defendant asked for “real young stuff” and said he would abuse a child as young as 4.<\/p>\n
“F… I love you hehe,” the other man replied.<\/p>\n
This afternoon, counsel Jono Ross argued for a sentence of home detention.<\/p>\n
He pointed to his client\u2019s difficult background, youth and remorse for the offending.<\/p>\n
But Judge Walker highlighted the “disturbing” and “abhorrent” nature of the defendant\u2019s offending.<\/p>\n
“You were not only actively seeking out this material but you were looking specifically for objectionable material in relation to younger children,” the judge said.<\/p>\n
The court heard Strange could not offer any reason for the behaviour and claimed he did not have a sexual attraction to children.<\/p>\n
Judge Walker was troubled by Strange’s “concerning desire to escalate” his offending.<\/p>\n
“I have to say that your employment history which includes you\u2026 working with young children, some with disabilities, causes the court real concern,” Judge Walker said.<\/p>\n
He said while it was “troubling” to send a young person to prison, that was the only appropriate sentence in this case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Southland teacher aide who had child pornography and demonstrated a “concerning desire to escalate” his offending, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-110064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}