CDirector of Public Prosecutions v Hoggard
[2025] VCC 1439
•1 October 2025
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA AT MILDURA CRIMINAL DIVISION | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
Case No. 25-00306
| COMMONWEALTH DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| CLAUDE HOGGARD |
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JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE CARLIN | |
WHERE HELD: | Mildura | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 24 September 2025 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 1 October 2025 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | CDPP v Hoggard | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2025] VCC 1439 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:Criminal law
Catchwords: Possession of child abuse material; offender had disadvantaged childhood; moral culpability reduced due to background and personality disorder; similar prior sexual offending against a child; offender already placed on sex offenders registration for life; early plea of guilt; prospects of rehabilitation guarded.
Legislation Cited: Criminal Code (Cth); Crimes Act 1914 (Cth); Sex Offender Registration Act 2004 (Vic); Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic)
Cases Cited:DPP v Garside [2016] VSCA 74; Baldwin v Police [2007] SASC 214; R v Cardwell [2021] QCA 112; Clarkson v The Queen (2011) 32 VR 361; R v Porte [2015] NSWCCA 174; The Queen v Pham (2015) 256 CLR 550; R v Verdins [2007] VSCA 10.
Sentence: Three years and two months imprisonment with non-parole period of 22 months.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the CDPP | Ms G. McMaster | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Ms R. Khan | Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service |
HER HONOUR:
Introduction[1]
[1] Summary based on the agreed facts set out in the Summary of Prosecution Opening and marked Exhibit A.
1Claude Hoggard, on 7 November 2024, police attended your home in Swan Hill with a search warrant and an order[2] compelling you to provide access to your electronic devices.
[2] Pursuant to s 3LA of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth)
2You handed them your Oppo Mobile Phone and provided the PIN code. An initial assessment of the phone indicated there was child abuse material within a folder labelled 'Safe' and which was secured with a passcode.
3You were arrested and taken to the Swan Hill police station where you were interviewed.
4You told the police that you had been looking at 'child porn' being 'naked little girls', particularly videos of 'naked little girls playing with themselves' for the last month and that you last accessed such material at 4 o'clock that morning through the apps WhatsApp and Telegram. You said the child abuse material 'downloads to [your] downloads folder' and then '[you] remove it from [your] downloads folder and put it in [your] safe folder' which had a lock on it. You provided the passcode to that folder to the police. You said you knew it was illegal and wrong and you knew it was wrong 'from the start'. You also said that you masturbate whilst you watch the videos.
5Subsequent examination of your phone by the Victoria Police Cybercrime Office revealed that you possessed a total of 20 unique non-cached child abuse material videos. Nineteen of these videos were located in the 'Safe' folder and one video was located in the 'Downloads' folder.
6The data from the phone was then categorised according to the Australian Child Abuse Categorisation Schema.
719 videos were classified as Category 1 meaning they contained media depicting a real pre-pubescent child/very first signs of puberty and the child is involved in a sex act, or the material is focused/concentrated on the anal or genital region of the child.
8One video was classified as Category 2 meaning other child abuse material that is illegal within Australia but does not fit within Category 1. Media may include images of children which are likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult where a child is subjected to sadism, torture, bestiality or humiliation. Images may depict a child as the person conducting the activity or observing other persons.
9The longest of the Category 1 videos was 19 minutes and 14 seconds, and the shortest was seven seconds. The total length of the Category 1 videos was 57 minutes and two seconds.
10The Category 2 video was six seconds long.
11A description of each of the videos in Category 1 is contained within the summary of prosecution opening and I shall not repeat it here. To illustrate the type of material on your phone it is enough if I say that the 19 minute video shows a naked girl of around nine years old exposing her vagina and anus to the camera and repeatedly digitally penetrating herself as well as sucking on a sprite bottle. Another video appeared to be taken by an adult male who was penetrating the vagina of a young girl from behind whilst she was on her hands and knees in front of him and another girl was lying on the bed watching. Both girls were naked and around seven years old. A third video shows a clothed girl of about 13 years old who rubs her hands over her body, exposes her breasts to the camera and then takes off her underwear and penetrates her vagina with her fingers and then a long black object which she then sucks and reinserts.
12On 24 September 2025 you pleaded guilty before me to a single charge of possess child abuse material obtained or accessed using a carriage service contrary to sub‑section 474.22A(1) of the Criminal Code.
13The maximum penalty for this offence is 15 years imprisonment. Further, as this is your second time in court for a child sexual abuse offence a mandatory minimum head sentence of four years' imprisonment applies unless a relevant exception can be established.
14A plea on your behalf proceeded on the same day with your counsel, Ms Khan, submitting that all sentencing principles could be satisfied by a sentence resulting in you not serving any actual time in prison. Given the sentencing mandates that apply in your case this would mean not only that I would have to find it appropriate to go at least one year below the prescribed minimum sentence of four years because of your plea of guilty and cooperation, but also that exceptional circumstances existed. Whilst conceding that it may be appropriate to go below the four years in your case, the prosecutor Ms McMaster submitted not only that were there no exceptional circumstances but also that a sentence of imprisonment involving a head sentence and non-parole period was required, in other words a sentence of more than three years.
15In determining your sentence, the law requires me to have regard to a variety of factors which I will outline in these sentencing remarks.[3] Some point towards a lower sentence and some point towards a harsher sentence. No one factor is automatically more important than any other.
[3] Section 16A of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth).
Your personal circumstances
16Your personal circumstances were outlined in defence submissions and a Psychological Report of Mr Simon Candlish. Mr Candlish met with you in person for 105 minutes on 4 June 2025 and spoke to you over the telephone for another two hours on 16 June 2025.
17You are a 40-year-old Aboriginal man from the Wiradjuri, Yorta Yorta and Wamba Wamba peoples. Your mother was a member of the stolen generation and an alcoholic. She had you when she was 17 years old and you were removed from her care when you were three. Your father died from health problems related to his alcohol use before you turned five.
18You were raised by your maternal grandmother, who was also an alcoholic and who you say was emotionally and physically abusive towards you. You describe her as strict and rarely affectionate. You are more positive about your grandmother's long-term partner but told Mr Candlish that he would 'flog' you if you disobeyed your grandmother. You also witnessed family violence between your grandmother and her partner.
19You had a close relationship with your aunt and uncle on your mother's side. Your mother told you that you were sexually abused by your uncle but you have no recollection of this. You had your first sexual experience with a male cousin between the ages of 12 and 13.
20You left school in Year 8 or 9. You struggled at school due to the issues you were experiencing at home. You describe yourself as a bit of a loner at school and lacking self-confidence because of your grandmother's verbal abuse.
21After you left school, you started an apprenticeship as a chef. You were eventually fired from this role due to your drug use. You worked in various short-term roles over the next few years, but after being released from custody in 2013 you were unemployed for five years. You eventually found work as a kitchenhand in Swan Hill but lost this job due to your poor mental health and drug use. You were last employed in 2022 or 2023. You told Mr Candlish that you would still have a job if you 'didn't hit the drugs'.
22On 3 July 2007 you were convicted of three charges of committing an indecent act with a child under 16 and sentenced to a total effective sentence of two years' imprisonment with a non-parole period of 12 months and put on the Sex Offender Register for life. I do not have the summary of this matter but you told Mr Candlish that you touched and rubbed your penis on a girl’s vagina when she was five or six years old and you were 18 or 19 years old.
23You met the mother of your children in 2009 not long after you were released from custody for that matter. You had a son and a daughter together and they are now aged 13 and 10. You did not disclose the fact of your children's birth to the Sex Offender Register and when the Department of Human Services, as it then was, found out, you were charged and told that you could not live at home with them.
24You told Mr Candlish that you have had depression since childhood and have
self-harmed in the past but have no current suicidal thoughts.25You first started using cannabis at age 15, and it soon became a daily habit. You started drinking alcohol at age 16 and at age 21 you started to use amphetamines. You told Mr Candlish that you are addicted to methylamphetamine and had been using it every day over the past 12 months including at the time of the offending.
26Mr Candlish found that you suffer from a severe cannabis and stimulant use disorder and a moderate alcohol use disorder. He also found that you have a mild personality disorder with prominent features of negative affectivity and disinhibition, and that your substance use further undermined your capacity for inhibition.
Objective Gravity of your offending and moral culpability
27Two factors of central importance in determining any sentence are the objective gravity of the offending and the moral culpability of the offender. Possession of child abuse material is a serious offence. It is not a victimless crime. If there was any doubt about its seriousness the maximum penalty of 15 years makes it clear, as does the fact there is a mandatory minimum sentence of four years for offenders who have previously committed a child sexual abuse offence.
28That said, there is obviously a wide spectrum of seriousness within any offence and possession of child abuse material is no exception. The criteria by which the seriousness of any particular instance of offending is to be judged have been set out repeatedly by appellate courts throughout Australia.[4] Whilst quantity is relevant, the cases make it clear that the nature and quality of the material is more important. The greater the cruelty, degradation and corruption and the more offensive the material is to community values the graver the offending.[5]
[4] See, eg, DPP (Cth) v Garside (2016) 50 VR 800 at [25].
[5] See, eg, DPP (Cth) v Garside (2016) 50 VR 800 at [70] and R v Cardwell [2021] QCA 112 at [22].
29In your favour you possessed a relatively small number of images, being 20 videos, on one device and there is no suggestion that you were involved in any further distribution of the material or that you profited from its possession in any way. Further, you only possessed the material for a relatively short time in the lead up to the actual charge date and because you secured the videos in a passcode protected folder there was no risk of anyone else gaining access.
30As against that all your images were videos, they were all unique and in total ran for almost an hour. Except for one video, they were of real prepubescent children ranging in age from about six years to 13 years old. There were numerous different children depicted and frequent penetrative acts, including male adults penetrating children with their penises and children penetrating themselves digitally or with objects. One video depicts a child subjecting herself to the degradation of pouring urine on herself.
31Whilst conceding that your offending was serious, Ms Khan submitted that it fell towards the lower end of the scale. Ms McMaster submitted that it was a low to mid-range example. I agree that your offending falls towards the lower end of the scale but it is far from the least serious example that one can imagine.
32I accept that your moral culpability is reduced because of your disadvantaged childhood not because there is a causal connection between your history and this offence, but because what happened to you in your childhood was beyond your control and did not set you up well for life. You are not to be judged the same as a person who has not had that history of deprivation.
33That said, you clearly knew that what you were doing was wrong and have blamed it on your ice use. You told Mr Candlish that you did not consider looking at child abuse material until you were on ice. You also told him that you used ice to numb your feelings of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Similarly, a letter from a social worker at Bendigo Health dated 21 November 2024, indicates that you told her that you only looked at child pornography when ice affected.
34Mr Candlish said:
A prominent aspect of Mr Hoggard's personality impairment is disinhibition. His substance abuse served to further undermine his capacity for inhibition. His judgement was compromised when affected by substances and his ongoing substance abuse contributed to social withdrawal and disconnection from others. He was aware that child abuse material was wrong and illegal. His distorted views and disinhibited state, as well as his instability in his sense of self, have contributed to his willingness to offend in this manner.
35I accept that your moral culpability is also reduced by your personality disorder but that reduction must itself be tempered because of your use of ice. Whilst your history of disadvantage may have contributed to your resort to ice, you still decided to take it knowing the effect it had on you. At any time in the one month leading up to the charged date you could have stopped downloading videos or deleted the videos you already had, if you had wanted to do so, but you did not. Further, you knew that you were on the Sex Offender Register and that you had previously sexually offended against a child, but those things did not deter you.
36In summary, whilst your moral culpability is not as high as someone without your personality disorder or history of childhood deprivation, I still consider it to be high.
Impact of your offending
37I am required to take into account any injury, loss or damage resulting from your offence and any Victim Impact Statement tendered.[6] Since the identities of the children in the videos are unknown there obviously can be no Victim Impact Statements in this case. That does not mean however that those children were not harmed by your conduct as the end consumer. There is a legal presumption that premature sexual activity causes long-term and serious physical and psychological harm to children regardless of consent. That presumption applies just as much to victims of cybersex offences as it does to contact offending[7], with the victims in such cases having to live with the knowledge that their images will remain on the internet indefinitely.[8]
[6] Section 16A (2)(e) and (ea) of the Crimes Act 2014.
[7] Clarkson v The Queen (2011) 32 VR 361.
[8] R v Porte [2015] NSWCCA 174 at [69] – [70].
38Your participation as a consumer perpetuated the exploitation and corruption of young children.
Current Sentencing Practices
39To promote consistency of approach in sentencing, I must have regard to current sentencing practices. Since this is a Commonwealth matter, this includes sentences considered on appeal in other States and territories.[9]
[9] The Queen v Pham (2015) 256 CLR 550 at [18] and [23] in the case of Commonwealth offences.
40I have had regard to the cases to which I was referred by the prosecution. Obviously no two cases are ever truly the same and, in any event, there is no single correct sentence. Nevertheless, the cases are a useful guide to sentencing practices for cases involving charges subject to the mandatory minimum sentence scheme as yours is.
Plea of Guilty, co-operation and remorse
41You are entitled to a discount in your sentence for the fact you co-operated with police at the outset and pleaded guilty at a very early stage. In so doing you facilitated the course of justice and took legal responsibility for your crimes. I am also satisfied that you are genuinely remorseful for your conduct.
42You told the police in your record of interview that:
I just want to be fully co-operative with you. I never want to do this again 'cause I know this was wrong from the start. Just over a year I've been on ice and it's been stuffing with my brain and everything else and it's like, my life was going to shit. I'm the dumbest person ever and I apologise for, I don't want to ever do it again and I will not ever do it again. I take responsibility for my actions and I don't blame anybody else.
43The prosecutor submitted that since the case against you was overwhelming your cooperation and plea of guilty were of less utilitarian value than they would be in other scenarios. Whilst that is true, it is also true that you did everything you could. Some people contest matters no matter how strong the case against them is. Not only is your cooperation evidence of your contrition, your admissions as to how you accessed and stored the child abuse material meant the police did not have to continue their investigation against you. In the circumstances I consider the discount should be significant.
Your character and risk of reoffending
44Your criminal history dates back to 2003 when you were only 18 years old and appeared before the court for burglary, theft and criminal damage. Since then, you have been before the courts in Victoria and New South Wales on many occasions for a range of offences and received dispositions of corrections orders which you mostly breached, fines, suspended sentences and immediate terms of imprisonment.
45Of most significance is that 2007 appearance in which you were convicted for three charges of indecent assault and also your subsequent repeated failures to comply with your reporting obligations under the Sex Offender Registration Act. Those breaches related to your failure to report changes in your personal circumstances and the birth of your children.
46You told Mr Candlish you do not consider yourself as being at risk of viewing child abuse material in the future as your arrest and charge had made you 'value not looking at porn'. You told him you did not see any connection between your prior sexual offending and this matter. You also expressed a desire to be drug free and to be there for your children when they turn 18. You are considering obtaining a truck licence and want to find out more about what is involved.
47Mr Candlish found that you fell into the moderate to low risk category for accessing child abuse material in the future and also he considered you to fall into the low risk category for a contact sexual offence against a child. In reaching that conclusion, he relied on the fact that there had been no contact sexual offending since your offending in about 2004-2005 when you were only 18-19 years old.
48Mr Candlish also said:
Mr Hoggard appears to show good prospects for rehabilitation of his sexual offending behaviour based on his presentation, his history and his assessed risk level. Given the potential for Mr Hoggard's risk level to continue to reduce over time, particularly through the ongoing achievement of prosocial goals, it would be useful for him to continue to have opportunities to pursue such goals in the wider community with support provided.
49Ms Khan submitted that you had good prospects of rehabilitation. She relied on Mr Candlish's opinion, the supports you have in the community, your motivation to remain drug free, the 20 year gap between your 2007 convictions and the present offending and the fact, as she submitted, that the present offence was not as serious as your 2007 offending essentially because that was contact offending and the present is not.
50I am not as optimistic as Ms Khan.
51Your many court appearances for noncompliance with your reporting obligations, the last being in August 2022, would have been a constant reminder of your 2007 convictions. It is concerning that neither the sentence of imprisonment you received for the indecent assaults, nor the sentences of imprisonment you received for some of the failures to comply, were enough to deter you from committing the offence before me. Allowing for the fact it may have had some effect, it is also concerning that the sex offender program you did in prison was not enough to stop you.
52As for the submission that your 2007 offending was less serious, I cannot agree. Although you did not abuse the victims in the videos yourself, you encouraged their abuse by providing the ready market. Such a submission tends to perpetuate the myth that child abuse material offences are inherently less serious than contact offences because the victims are unknown and unidentifiable. Further, the 2007 offences were dealt with in the Magistrates' Court with a likely lesser maximum penalty and certainly no mandatory minimum penalty and finally you were only 18 or 19 years old and therefore much less morally culpable than you are as the 39 year old man who committed this offence.
53Whilst it is in your favour that you did not sexually offend against children for almost 20 years, it is also very troubling that after all that time you did, because what it shows is that you have not in fact reformed.
54Balancing the various factors including the degree of remorse you have shown for this offence I do not consider your prospects of rehabilitation to be good, but I do consider them to be reasonable providing you can maintain abstinence from illicit drugs.
The burden and effects of imprisonment
55In determining the appropriate sentence I must consider how a term of imprisonment would be likely to impact you. There is no evidence which would enliven Verdins limbs 5 or 6 being the burden and likely effect of prison on you and your mental health given your personality disorder. That said, I do take into account the fact that the challenges of reintegration into society may be greater for you than a person without your personality disorder.
Purposes of Sentencing
56I am obliged under Commonwealth law to ensure that my sentence achieves the sentencing purposes of adequately punishing you, deterring you and others from committing this sort of offence and promoting your rehabilitation.
57In your case the general sentencing principle that I must impose the least severe sentence necessary to achieve those sentencing purposes is modified by some mandatory sentencing provisions. That is, I must sentence you to a term of imprisonment of at least four years unless I consider it appropriate to go below that on account of your plea of guilty and co-operation and further in the event I decided to impose a sentence of three years or less I could not order your immediate release unless I was satisfied there were exceptional circumstances. The relevant provisions are more complicated than that but that is the effect of them in your case.
58It is well-established that general deterrence is the primary sentencing consideration for offences involving the online exploitation of children. These offences are easy to commit, difficult to detect, cause irreparable harm and are prevalent. It is necessary that my sentence sends a clear message to any person who is minded to engage in this conduct, that if caught they will be sentenced severely.
59The authorities clearly establish that sentences of immediate imprisonment are almost always required and that an offender's personal mitigating factors, such as good character, age and prospects of rehabilitation, are of lesser significance than for other types of offences where such features may be less common.[10]
[10] see eg, DPP v Garside [2016] VSCA 74 at [63].
60I consider it appropriate to moderate the principle of general deterrence on account of the contribution that your personality disorder played in your offending, but only slightly.
61The authorities have also regarded specific deterrence as an important sentencing consideration for these offences[11] and, given my finding as to your prospects of rehabilitation it is obvious that it does have some role to play in your case. In other words, I need to ensure my sentence deters you from doing this sort of thing again.
[11] see eg, Baldwin v Police [2007] SASC 214 at [16] to [18].
62The effect of the mandatory minimum four year term is to create an uplift in sentencing for subsequent child sexual offences. Four years is the starting point for offences which fall in the least serious category of offending, which, for reasons I have already explained, yours does not. It is only appropriate to go below the four year minimum where appropriate recognition of the plea of guilty and cooperation cannot occur without doing so. I am satisfied that it is appropriate to do so in this case, however I do not consider it appropriate to impose a sentence of three years or less. Indeed, weighing up all the relevant matters I consider a sentence of more than three years is required.
63I will impose a non-parole period that is long enough to allow you to complete any relevant rehabilitative programs and to reflect the seriousness of your offending but short enough to promote your rehabilitation in the community.
64Mr Hoggard, could you stand up please.
65Weighing up the competing considerations as best I can, on Charge 1 you are convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment of three years and two months.
66In respect of that sentence I set a non-parole period of 22 months. That is two months less than two years.
Presentence Detention
67I declare you have not served any days of pre-sentence detention, so there is nothing to deduct from that sentence.
Section 6AAA
68I do not know that it is necessary in Commonwealth matters but I will also state, that if you had pleaded not guilty on this charge and been found guilty by a jury, I would have sentenced you to five years' imprisonment with a non-parole period of three years and six months.
Sex Offender Registration
69I also have to inform you in relation to your sex offender registration. You have pleaded guilty to one class 2 offence within the meaning of the Sex Offenders Registration Act 2004. Now you are already subject to the SORA reporting obligations, as you know for life, because you have been found guilty of three class 2 offences, that was in July 2007. Upon being sentenced for this offence you will continue to be a registerable offender and as you will have been found guilty of four class 2 offences in total, you will be required to continue to comply with reporting obligations for the remainder of your life. So it does not actually alter the situation, it is the same because you are already reporting for life.
70I will also make the forfeiture order that is sought, which is of your black Oppo mobile phone.
71So Mr Hoggard, do you understand the sentence that I have imposed?
72OFFENDER: Yes, I do, I understand.
73HER HONOUR: All right.
74Anything arising or anything I have left out?
75MS KHAN: Not from my perspective, Your Honour.
76HER HONOUR: Thank you, Ms Khan.
77MS McMASTER: No, Your Honour.
78HER HONOUR: Thank you, Ms McMaster.
79I see Mr Hoggard has a friend in court. I will leave the Bench, as long as custody is happy with that, just so that Ms Khan can speak to Mr Hoggard and his friend can say goodbye, but I will leave the Bench now.
80MS KHAN: Thank you, Your Honour.
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