An Auckland man has been sentenced to nine months’ home detention for possessing child sexual exploitation material involving children as young as 5 years old.
Lee Irving Musham was sentenced in the Manukau District Court yesterday after pleading guilty to one representative charge of knowingly possessing child sexual exploitation material.
Searches of Musham’s residential and business addresses were carried out following an investigation by the Department of Internal Affairs’ digital child exploitation team.
Several electronic devices were seized, which after forensic examination were found to contain images of sexual exploitation of children as young as 5 years old, bestiality, and computer-generated files promoting bestiality.
“Collecting and viewing this material is not passive offending,” the DIA’s manager of the digital child exploitation team, Tim Houston, said.
“It condones the abuse children suffer to satisfy the market for these images.
“One way we work to put an end to this form of child abuse is to stop those who create, collect and distribute this material.”
Musham was not required to register as a child sex offender. However, the devices used to commit the offending were ordered to be destroyed.
In 2024, the digital child exploitation team conducted 69 investigations into child exploitation, which helped to safeguard 14 New Zealand children from harm, the DIA said.
“Additionally, the digital child exploitation filtering system blocked over one million attempts to access websites hosting child sexual abuse material.”
