ACT Supreme Court jails Philip Mertell for possessing, accessing child abuse material

Philip Fletcher Mertell, 68, was busted with more than 500 files of child abuse material, depicting up to 75 victims, when police raided his home in January last year.

The information technology worker subsequently pleaded guilty to seven charges of possessing child abuse material and two counts of accessing it.

Sentencing remarks, published by the ACT Supreme Court on Wednesday, show Acting Justice Verity McWilliam jailed Mertell last Friday for six years and three months.

The judge set a non-parole period of two years.

Mertell first came to the attention of police when they learnt his internet protocol address had been used to access child abuse material.

During the subsequent search of his home, Mertell told investigators he was "addicted to downloading things".

While he admitted using search terms like "nude girls" and opening some files with references to children in the titles, Mertell denied having a sexual interest in children.

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His electronics were examined, revealing he had accessed 71 files of child abuse material and possessed 513 examples of it, across seven devices, between June 2020 and January 2021.

Acting Justice McWilliam inspected a representative sample of the material as part of the sentencing process, describing it as "highly offensive and degrading".

"Actual children were used in the creation of the material," she said.

"With particular regard to the age of the victims depicted in this case, it is also reasonable to infer the victims would have suffered physical harm."

Acting Justice McWilliam said Mertell had engaged in "obsessive downloading" of pornography, which a psychologist, Danielle Clout, believed would have desensitised him to "more extreme content" and indirectly contributed to his offending.

The judge said the 68-year-old had sought to minimise the fact child abuse material was among his downloads by blaming it on "hoarding tendencies", and claiming "curiosity" was the reason he had opened files with names that referred to children.

"Accidental download and curiosity may have explained the first file the offender accessed," Acting Justice McWilliam said.

"However, it does not explain the further 70 files that the offender accessed."

The judge added that Mertell's "overarching narrative of inadvertence" was difficult to reconcile with his lengthy career in the IT industry and his "repeated assertion that he knows more than 98.9 per cent of the general population about computers".

Mertell was assessed as suitable for an intensive correction order and his barrister, John Purnell SC, urged Acting Justice McWilliam to impose this sort of community-based sentence.

Mr Purnell argued his client's attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism were "exceptional circumstances" that would justify sparing him time behind bars for crimes that would ordinarily result in a period of actual imprisonment.

Acting Justice McWilliam rejected this submission as she found nothing other than full-time imprisonment would be appropriate.

She accordingly imposed the jail term, under the terms of which Mertell will become eligible for parole in March 2024.

In sentencing, the judge said Mertell had planned to retire overseas and that the 68-year-old had made a 40 per cent down payment on a condominium in Thailand.

"He noted he would be unable to fulfill this intention should he be convicted for the current offences before the court," she said.

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