An Interpol investigation into a child sex abuse website in Croatia has triggered the arrest of a 48-year-old Christchurch man.
The Police Electronic Crime Laboratory recovered images from a laptop computer seized in a raid on September 30, including pictures of children involved in sexual acts with animals, and children in bondage acts.
The man, a site manager, pleaded guilty in the Christchurch District Court on Wednesday to a charge of possessing objectionable material. Judge Brian Callaghan remanded him on bail for sentence on March 5.
He called for a pre-sentence report and a report on the man's suitability for home detention. The man will live at a rural address near Christchurch during the remand.
Judge Callaghan also granted interim name suppression at the request of defence counsel Elizabeth Bulger, but says there is no promise about final suppression at the sentencing.
The chain of events began in December 2007 when Interpol contacted the New Zealand police during an investigation into child abuse and exploitation images being accessed from a website in Croatia.
"Operation Sledgehammer was commenced to investigate New Zealand internet users who had accessed this site during the time the child exploitation images were posted on-line," police say.
Several internet addresses were identified and two images were linked to the address in Christchurch where the man was living.
During the raid on his home, several computers were seized. Police found 147 images on the laptop computer but the technicians say there were actually about twice that number of pictures.
Another 109 small images had stayed in the temporary Internet folder on the computer, from pages where images were viewed but not saved or downloaded.
The man also downloaded another 38 images. Eleven were deleted but later recovered by the police technicians. The police summary say the images included children modelling in provocative poses, involved in sexual acts with either adults, children or animals, and bondage acts.
No images were found that were linked to the original investigation that began in Croatia.
The man told police that he had a problem with viewing child sex images but did not know how to stop.
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