Patrick Jim Ramsay-Feeney admitted to accessing 5370 files of child abuse material. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
A man has been released from prison but will be subject to a nine-month conditional intensive correction order after downloading more than 5000 files showing child abuse material, including sickening sexualised images of characters from The Simpsons.
In January, 34-year-old Patrick Jim Ramsay-Feeney was released from prison after spending nine months in jail for his crimes, outlined in an ACT Supreme Court judgement by Justice John Burns published yesterday (1 March).
The agreed statement of facts show that in February 2019, Queensland Police told the AFP that the disability support pensioner was a user of a particular photo-sharing website.
That November, when police searched his Canberra home, he unlocked and handed over his mobile phone. On it, police found child abuse photos of pre-teen girls.
He also admitted to receiving and transmitting child abuse material using his email address.
“I will break at this point to observe that you are entitled to a degree of leniency based upon the fact that you assisted the police in the investigation of this matter by not only providing them with your mobile phone, but voluntarily unlocking it and also participating in a record of interview, in which you made full admissions,” Justice Burns told Ramsay-Feeney.
A digital forensic analysis of Ramsay-Feeney’s phone found 5370 files of child abuse material, including girls being “subject to sadism”, as well as cartoons of underage characters from The Simpsons.
Analysis showed he accessed the files 48 different times between September 2017 and November 2019.
Justice Burns said it was “clear that these are objectively serious offences”.
Ramsay-Feeney, who has two adult children that he is not in contact with, pleaded guilty to three counts related to using a carriage service to possess child abuse material, for which he faced 15 years’ jail.
Justice Burns noted Ramsay-Feeney admitted he had a sexual attraction to children, both boys and girls, and that he knew his offences were unlawful.
“You stated that you were unaware that the cartoon images were illegal and stated that you do not intend to download or view further images in the future,” Justice Burns said.
Justice Burns took into account that Ramsay-Feeney was behind bars from April 2020 to January this year when sentencing him to nine months’ jail, backdated to account for that time.
While he was released from custody in January, he was also sentenced to a nine-month conditional intensive correction order, a community-based sentence that will expire in October 2021.
“You still have effectively a term of nine months’ imprisonment hanging over your head,” Justice Burns told Ramsay-Feeney.
“[You] must understand that if you do not comply with the terms of the order that I have made, you still have that nine months that you have to serve.”
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