Sacked police officer jailed over child porn

PERTH - A sacked West Australian police officer was today jailed for a maximum of two and a half years after pleading guilty to possessing more than 200,000 "extreme" images of child pornography collected over seven years.

Michael Anthony Willis, 34, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to two charges of possessing child pornography arising from a raid on his northern Perth house during a nationwide crackdown last September.

The Perth District Court was told Willis, a former senior constable who is the father of a two-month-old baby, downloaded and catalogued 213,020 still images and 892 digital movies.

The court earlier heard submissions that Willis had not viewed many of the images downloaded from the internet, although they had been methodically catalogued and divided into still and video forms.

Today, Judge Michael Muller said he had seen some of the images and they were among the worst of their kind.

They reflected scenes of masochism, bondage, degradation and vaginal penetration of girls between the age of one and 12 years by adult males, he said. Others depicted children posing alone.

"Quite apart from the extreme nature of the pornographic images and digital films, the large number you have collected and the period during which they were stored carry your level of culpability to the top end of the scale," Judge Muller said.

"The fact that you had built up your collection over a period of no less than seven years shows only too clearly how deliberately and methodically you went about your task."

In sentencing Willis to 30 months jail on each charge, to be served concurrently, Judge Muller said he was satisfied Willis was unlikely to offend again and was remorseful.

However, he said it was important the sentence acted as a deterrent to other would-be offenders.

"The collection and retention of such material provides a ready market for the purveyors of such obscenity," he said.

"It is often said that without the collectors there would be no market."

During sentencing submissions on Wednesday, the court was told Willis was "seduced" by the anonymity of the internet and was acutely ashamed and humiliated by his actions and their consequences.

Willis had been with the WA Police Service for 15 years at the time of his arrest. He has since been dismissed.

He is eligible for parole.

- AAP