Director of Public Prosecutions v West - [2025] VCC 414

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

AT MELBOURNE

CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Revised

Not Restricted

Suitable for Publication

CR-24-00717

THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

ALEC WEST

---

JUDGE:

HIS HONOUR JUDGE MULLALY

WHERE HELD:

Melbourne

DATE OF HEARING:

09 December 2024

DATE OF SENTENCE:

01 April 2025

CASE MAY BE CITED AS:

DPP v West

MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:

[2025] VCC 414

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
---
Subject: CRIMINAL LAW- SENTENCE
Catchwords: Control an electronic service used for child abuse material; produce
child abuse material for use through a carriage service; Dealing in
proceeds of crime; Use carriage service to access child abuse
material; Use carriage service to access child abuse material; Use
carriage service to transmit child abuse material; Use carriage
service to make available child abuse material; Possess or control
child abuse material for use through a carriage service.

Legislation Cited: Surveillance Devices Act 1999 (Vic); Crimes Act 1914 (Cth); Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic).
Cases Cited:Hurt v The King; Hurt v The King; and Delzotto v The King [2024] HCA 8
Sentence:Total effective sentence of 11 years and 7 months’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 8 years and four months.
---

APPEARANCES:

Counsel

Solicitors

For the Director of Public Prosecutions

Ms H. Baxter

Office of Public Prosecutions

For the Accused

Ms S. Buckley

H & L Legal

HIS HONOUR:

Alec West, yet again this court is required to sentence a first-time offender who otherwise presents as an ordinary law-abiding citizen for serious child abuse offences. However, unlike many of the child pornography cases that come before the courts, this case, due to the type of offending and the level of criminality involved, is different to those all too many possession of child abuse material cases. Indeed, both the defence and importantly the prosecution could not find other cases where an accused has been prosecuted for the particular offences that you have pleaded guilty to.
The offences you have pleaded guilty to are set out on the indictment. They are:
a)Charge 1, controlling an electronic service used for child abuse material.
b)Charge 2, producing child abuse material for use through a carriage service.
c)Charge 3, dealing in the proceeds of crime worth $100,000 or more.
d)Charge 4, using a carriage service to access child abuse material.
e)Charge 5, using a carriage service to transmit child abuse material.
f)Charge 6, the aggravated form of that offence of transmitting child abuse material. The offence is aggravated because it involved conduct on three or more occasions and involved two or more people.
g)Charge 7, use a carriage service to make available child abuse material.
h)Charge 8, possession or control of child abuse material for use through a carriage service.
There are also three State offences. They are summary offences involving breaches of the Surveillance Devices Act 1999 (Vic). The maximum term is two years. The nature and circumstances of those offences arising from you filming from your bedroom, the bedrooms and other rooms of your female neighbours, makes it clear that these summary offences are likewise serious examples of those offences.
As is almost always said in sentencing for child abuse material offences, Parliament has fixed long maximum terms because the offending is so egregious and so corrosive of decent societal norms. That is the case here, with maximum terms of 30 years' imprisonment for Charge 6, 20 years' imprisonment for Charges 1 and 3 and, 15 years' imprisonment for Charges 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8.
I will say more later of how I am to deal with Charges 3 and 8. What needs to be understood now is that Parliament has, in recent times, further emphasised just how seriously these offences are seen by imposing, by legislation, a mandatory minimum head sentence of five years for Charge 1 and seven years for Charge 6. These terms are required to be imposed subject to allowing adjustments for a plea of guilty and cooperation. Again, I will say more of the practical implementation of that statutory regime when dealing with the appropriate sentences for each of those two charges.
The point to understand, Mr West, is that Parliament has made it crystal-clear that the expectation of the community is that, in the ordinary course of events, years of imprisonment will be imposed for these offences.
The facts and circumstances of your offending was tendered in the form of an amended Prosecution Opening for the plea. A version of that summary which was read at the plea excluded the graphic content. I have taken into account the whole of the agreed summary of facts.
In addition, because of the unique aspects of this case, I did see some stills and watched short excerpts from the animated game created and produced by you. In more recent times, judges have refrained from looking at child abuse material and rather have relied on verbal descriptions and classifications. Such a methodology allows for the gravity of the offending to be appreciated without causing what can be significant and debilitating psychological damage or secondary trauma.
Here I do agree with the prosecution that it was necessary to endure watching some excerpts so as to appreciate how lifelike and sophisticated the animations were. And although plainly the characters were not real children, and could not be mistaken for real children, the animation and the storylines, the whole enterprise was squarely directed at vile sexualising and sexual exploitation of and explicit sexual acts committed with children in an incestuous scenario. The focus, the whole point, the premise of the game, was the sexual exploitation and the committing of incest with children and relatives.
To return to the facts and circumstances as set out in the Prosecution Opening, in May 2023 following information I understand was obtained by Border Force authorities, the police undertook investigations into the creation and distribution of a computer game titled 'Proud Father'. What was discovered was that the game was available on open-source internet platforms. Most relevant were two websites named Subscribe Star and itch.io. There were other websites that enabled access to the game. Indeed you, Mr West, indicated in your record of interview that many unauthorised copies or websites allowed anyone to download your game.
On 2 August 2023, police searched your rented premises in Geelong. Police were able to determine from what they found that you were the creator, controller, distributer, profit maker and central figure in this dreadful computer game. The police seized six computer or digital devices which not just revealed your central role in the offences arising from the computer game but also revealed your own collection of real-life child abuse material. That is, images and videos of real children being raped and sexually abused and exploited. The surveillance camera and your memory cards that contain videos of the movements of your female neighbours were also found.
In dealing with the facts and circumstances and the nature of the offending that I must take into account, I will deal with the charges in more or less chronological order. Given Charge 4 concerns the separate real life child abuse material, I will defer that until I have dealt with all offences that are connected to the game you created and distributed.
Your own counsel insightfully pointed out that the abhorrent content of what you created makes it incongruent to call it a game. However, given all the references to gaming and the intent to have the content be viewed and played like other online games I will refer to the 'Proud Father’ content as the game you created and distributed for profit.
The first two charges on the indictment of controlling an electronic service used for child abuse material and Charge 2, the producing of child abuse material for use through a carriage service in the form of the game do significantly overlap. That issue was of particular importance to the principle of totality. I will turn to that principle and its operation with respect to the whole indictment and the related summary offences in due course. But at this point, the overlap of Charges 1 and 2 means that the discussion of the gravity of the offences is best done in a combined fashion.
The game is a visual narrative or story which contains or indeed promotes sexual abuse of children. The individual playing the game does not simply watch the storyline unfold but does so from the perspective or the view and assumes the role of the sexual predator, the father. The premise is that the player will engage in more and more sexual abuse but be seen and described benignly rather than as a predator.
The player is invited to make decisions or select alternatives that come up on the screen. Of note, if the player chooses not to direct the father to engage in dreadful sexual activity the player, in effect, loses or fails and the game ends or does not progress. The game was created to increase and to continue to increase the level of sexual depravity in order for the player to continue.
I point out that the player does not direct, as might be the case with other games, many, many other games, such things as using a keyboard to jump over hurdles or shoot at enemies. The player cannot do that in this game.
But the player has choices available as to the age of the children. The lowest age set is 12, however, if a higher age is selected the appearance of the child on the screen remains the same. The youngest are plainly prepubescent. Other characters are portrayed as older, mainly by being more sexually or physically developed. The conversations that can be heard as part of the game reinforce the young age and the sexualisation of the children abused.
Quoting from the Prosecution Opening that was read at the plea, from paragraph 18.
“The intention of the game is to provide a fictitious account of an incestuous relationship between the father (the player) and his daughters, niece, sister, and other females characters. This includes the grooming and seduction of these characters along with explicit sexual acts, some of which are not consensual and performed on female characters while they are asleep.
The player is presented with pre-rendered sex scenes involving the father, his daughters and other characters including depictions of sexual intercourse, fellatio and other sexual acts with the father and each other. These interactions are lifelike, detailed and depict the genital and breast area of the children. These scenes are overlayed with text representing vocals from the characters describing their enjoyment of the acts, their efforts to remain undetected by other family members, and code words to describe the children wanting to engage in sexual acts with the father (the player).”
Your role as the creator of the game involved you purchasing three‑dimensional renders from an international website supplier. You used this website's software to create the characters, that is their physical characteristics. You developed the storylines. You wrote the verbal scripts and included the lifelike sounds. You were constantly updating and upgrading the game, creating special additions, for instance, such as Christmas and Halloween episodes. In total, there were 20 upgrades of the game over the near on three years that you operated this game until your arrest. That is changes, upgrades and improvements were added on average every two months.
You did have some technical assistance from a man named Shaddy. He was paid by you as a contractor. He lived in Canada and, as I understand it, faces prosecution in Canada. As mentioned, the main website for the distributions were two websites you controlled called Subscribe Star and itch.io. The main site, Subscribe Star, contained the following and again I read from the Prosecution Opening at paragraph 35.
“The front ‘Profile Page’ of the Subscribe Star page has an introduction updated by ‘Westy’, [of course you are Westy], on 26 May 2023.’ It said, "This game is made mostly by me (Westy). I have a coder (Shaddy) that makes things like Gallery replay Gallery, Custom Start, Walkthrough all possible. And he helps with the proofreading of my terrible spelling and grammar. This allows me to focus mainly on rendering and scripting for each update".”
On the Subscribe Star website, downloading the game was free, however, the game advertised subscription tiers ranging from $1, $5, $10, $20 and $40 monthly. The higher the subscription, the more features were available to subscribers. Features for paying subscribers included early access to new versions of the game, access to developer update recordings produced by you and access to your Discord server which contained feedback forums where users could discuss the game. As at the date of the search warrant, you had over 3,000 subscribers paying various monthly subscriptions.
Discord, which was mentioned, is a platform that principally allows for multi-user communication or group conversations. It also allows for images and videos to be transferred and distributed to others in the Discord group. The role of the Discord platform comes very much to the fore with Charges 5 and 6.
As noted, you offered the game for free but sought out the subscriptions from users at relatively small amounts per month to enable them to get early access to updates and be involved in Discord chats and forums. The prosecution was unable to ascertain how many times the game was downloaded from the main website Subscribe Star. However, it is clear from the revenue secured by this website that there was far and away more download subscribers and engagements with the game from that website than from the other website you controlled called itch.io. That website's creator dashboard tab, that is on itch.io, indicated that the game had been downloaded 565,000 times from 28 July 2020 to 26 May 2023. The site was available beyond that until your arrest in August 2023. From that site, you received a total of $70,747.65 from 7,463 separate payments.
What was able to be ascertained and calculated from the Subscribe Star website was that the money you made was a total of $835,156. That is a vastly bigger figure than that from itch.io and this indicates that the already large number of downloads that are known, 565,000 from itch.io, must have been exceeded by a very large multiplier for the Subscribe Star website. Thus, in assessing the gravity of your offences, in particular the serious charges being Charges 1 and 2, the scope and spread of the game was enormous. While there can be no precision, it seems a descriptor like millions and millions of downloads is an apt description.
I will return back to the offending based on you securing large amounts of money and also the mitigation that flows from your cooperation in settling pecuniary penalty-type matters with the Commonwealth. I will return to that in due course.
These facts and circumstances of the extent of the downloads and the subscribers and the money made establishes the broad scope of your offending which in turn, as I said, adds to the gravity. It would appear from the material that in the last few months before your arrest that the money you were making was increasing significantly over what was made in earlier periods when you were starting. There seems no doubt that, sadly, this vile child abuse material that you created was being accessed more and more and you were increasing your income and profit as a child abuse entrepreneur.
As you said in your record of interview, this was your full-time occupation. You were deeply involved, spending long hours creating this appalling content so as to make money. You said you found what you called a gap in the market, and you exploited it profitably.
Plainly, the first charge of controlling an electronic service used for child abuse material for the two years and 11 months from 3 September 2020 to 2 August 2023 is the most serious charge. As I said, it is a charge that is or works in tandem with Charge 2, the production of the child abuse material, the content. That is, to make it available on the carriage service that you controlled.
The appellate authorities and sentencing judges in speaking of the more common range of offences or of offenders who have accessed and downloaded child abuse material have made it clear that these types of users provide a market for the evil entrepreneurs who create or cause the child abuse material to be available. Regrettably, it is rare for the creators to be before the courts. You were the creator and controller of the child abuse material. You were the entrepreneur profiting from this sordid market.
While I reiterate you are not securing in your work or compelling real children to engage in appalling acts with adults or other children. Rather, your creation does much to normalise abhorrent sexual behaviours such as incest and dominance of males over children. Your sexualising of children and the promotion of incest as a normal way of interacting within families reveals a dark aspect of your character.
Also, the gravity of Charge 1 and the production charge, Charge 2, is added to because you used your computer skills to create what you advertised as a game. A computer game. Legitimate gaming is widespread and an increasingly popular pastime. It is very much part of modern life. It is a much sought-out form of entertainment. Indeed, it is a competitive sport. It is a lucrative industry. There are millions and millions of adherents and participants worldwide in legitimate gaming. Given the underpinning technology, gaming is most popular with the young, but it is not limited, with the spread and interest in gaming being as broad as the reach of the internet.
The point here is that your creation of a child abuse material game to be played like a legitimate game and that involves moving through different scenarios like other games is an insidious prolonging of an attractive legitimate internet-based pastime and one that involves children and young people in large numbers.
Although there was a warning at the point of downloading at the beginning of the game requiring a user to be over 18, there was no system to prevent
under-18’s downloading and seeing the vile content.
Also, while there was a warning as to there being nudity and sex scenes there was a deliberately false statement indicating none of those portrayed in the game were under 18. Clearly and deliberately many of the central characters were depicted and appeared well under 18.
As is widely mentioned in child abuse material cases, the breadth and permanency of the internet means that detection is difficult. In this case, the closing down of the means of production by your arrest does not mean the spread is completely curtailed. As you, in a sense, complained in your record of interview, others had taken your game and made it widely available on the internet. The corrupt impact of the game you created is ongoing.
As I have made clear, your offending does not involve real children. However, the legislation that you breach contemplates child abuse animations as part of the criminality. The whole thrust of the legislation is, to quote the explanatory memorandum of the legislation introducing these provisions into the Criminal Code, to “address the ever-increasing role played by electronic services in enabling the exchange of child abuse material” and to address the consequences of the establishment and growth of global networks and markets perpetuating the demand for child abuse material.[1]
[1] Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Crimes Against Children and Community Protection Measures) Bill 2019, Explanatory Memorandum, 91, 92.
The authorities make clear that animations are not to be seen as harmless. The powerful tendency of normalising sexual activity and exploitation of children, including within a family, may stimulate susceptible recipients to engage in sexual activity with real children, including their own children. The grooming or encouragement to the recipients or players of your game creates a real risk with appalling consequences if the risk is realised.

The gravity of animations and here the gaming scenarios, while not involving physical violations of live children, does fuel demand for child abuse material including child abuse material involving real children. That in turn creates the risks that I have spoken of, to all children.
Also, these animation stories and scenes involve the grooming of children and the leading of the children into sexual activity with the adult male father or relative. While it is not put that this was an explicit playbook for an incestuous father, it nonetheless provides strategies and examples of behaviours to men. But its most dreadful aspect is how, in this gaming environment, it provides a sense of legitimacy and even a sense of reward for incestuous conduct.
On any analysis, this was very grave offending. What is required is a stern response reasserting proper community values.
Charge 3 is an offence of dealing with the proceeds of crime, that being the substantial amount of money, I think $891,000, received from subscriptions. There was a further $38,000 or thereabouts that falls under a different regime. The whole period of securing significant income was just short of the three years, albeit that the charge period of Charge 3 was for a shorter period.
I have referred to the significant income and the fact that you were a child abuse entrepreneur in my assessment of the gravity of your offending as captured by Charges 1 and 2. I well appreciate the different legislative regimes involved in the calculation and the casting of these charges that arise here. However, there must be acknowledgment of the different forms of offending, but at the same time an acknowledgment of the overlap of the offending and caution so that you are not doubly punished.
The prosecution included as an aspect of Charge 3, along with an aspect of Charge 8, the possession of child abuse material that I can take into account pursuant to the provisions of s16BA of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth). I will return to this when I have dealt with Charge 8. But I note here and will expand upon your cooperation in the proceeds of crime and pecuniary penalty proceedings.
Charge 5 involves another dimension of the Proud Father gaming program. It is noted as part of the service or part of the product which involved payments was the availability of users to be involved in chatrooms or conversations with you using a Discord platform. It is an offence with a 15-year term of imprisonment as its maximum to use a carriage service to transmit child abuse material. That offence commonly involves providing others with child abuse material that an offender has located or downloaded from the internet or the dark web. It can be a very grave offence involving enormous catalogues or gigabytes of material forwarded from one paedophile to another.
Here, you used Discord to speak to and transmit parts of scenes or other aspects of the game to your collaborator who is known as Shaddy. This occurred on three occasions between 1 August 2022 and 2 March 2023. There were two child abuse images sent in that period, two videos in January 2023 and a gallery of images in March 2023. This offence needs to be seen in the context that he, like you, was immersed in the whole game. He was a technical contributor.
Also, as part of Charge 5, on 25 March 2022 you sent a regular known user images during a Discord chat and similar in December 2022. Two images were sent to another known user in a private Discord chat. In assessing the gravity of this offence, I will keep these factors and the general overlap of the offending well in mind.
Charge 6 is again, like Charge 5, an offence of transmitting child abuse material via a carriage service. It is, however, the aggravated form of this offence because, using the Discord platform, you had a group of four in a group and in those Discord chats you sent child abuse material on three separate occasions. The aggravated form of this offence requires there to be more than two in a group and images sent on three separate occasions at least. The consequence of committing and pleading guilty to this aggravated form of the charge is that the maximum term is doubled to 30 years and importantly a mandatory minimum head sentence is required and fixed at seven years. I will say more of the mandatory minimum statutory scheme shortly.
The conduct constituting the crime was that on 24 October 2022, 10 January 2023 and 15 January 2023, you sent child abuse material images and a video from the game to one of the groups which involved three others that you were communicating with over the Discord platform. You were part of that group that was named appropriately the Black Heart Group. As can be seen, this offending conduct was just at or over the numerical requirements. I do not see the sharing or early release of images in this instance of parts of the game that were either already or were to be soon released as a particularly serious example of this aggravated offence. That said, I am required to impose a lengthy sentence even when the full benefits of a plea and cooperation are factored into the sentencing equation.
Charge 7 is the offence of using a carriage service to make available child abuse material. On 23 June 2023, you made available to subscribers on the Subscribe Star website page a developer update of the game which depicted child characters naked or engaging in sexual acts. The update had a tab which allowed the subscribers to see the children or the children characters in various poses and outfits and with written profiles which included hobbies and interests, all of which were focused on being involved in incestuous behaviours. While this is again a separate charge and there is a legitimate endeavour to deal with separate forms of criminality in the broad spectrum of child abuse material, there is here again an overlap or a context of this offending being part of the broad child abuse game that you had created and were distributing.
Charge 8 is one of possession of child abuse material. A significant part of that charge relates to child abuse material you had on your computers and devices on 2 August 2023 when the police came with a search warrant. All these images related to or arose from your creation of the game. Again, the vast majority of the images found, or 144,449 total images and videos, they were related to ‘Proud Father’. There were, in total when combined with other child abuse material, a total of 145,026 child abuse material images and videos.
It should be noted that of the 144,000 images related to the game, about 15,000 were unique and the remainder were copies and repeats. Again, I have factored in the overlap arising from the central offending, that is the child abuse material and the Proud Father game, giving rise to multiple offences each targeting a particular aspect of child abuse material offending. Also, this charge along with Charge 3 has taken into account the provisions that are set out in s16BA.[2]
[2]Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) (‘Crimes Act’).
There remain 577 images and videos, almost all being unique. These were what you possessed of real-life child abuse material in your own collection. These aspects of Charge 8 dovetail with Charge 4, that is the charge of using a carriage service to access child abuse material over the period 19 October 2021 to 27 July 2023. Again, as to aspects of Charge 8, they are subject to s16BA provisions.[3] I make it clear that I have taken into account in the sentencing, in particular for the main charges and also separately, the accessing of Charge 4, that is accessing child abuse material. I have taken what was set out in the schedules in respect of Charge 4 and separately for Charge 3. I will make this clearer shortly when dealing with the sentence.
[3]Ibid.
Well perhaps I will do it now. I make it clear that, like the offences listed in the schedule relating to the dealing of proceeds of crime, Charge 3, I have, in the calculus for Charge 8 and Charge 3, taken into account the offences as set out in the schedule to the s16BA form, that you have admitted your guilt and you do not fall to be separately sentenced for those identified offences set out in the schedule.
Charge 4 is the charge that relates to the child abuse material that you downloaded, as it were, over the period October 2021 to October 2022 and then on 5 February 2023 and on 26 and 27 July 2023. The websites you visited and the material you downloaded was at the serious and approaching the extreme end of the spectrum, though graduating the extent of depravity at this level is difficult. There were images and videos depicting all manner of penetrations of children, some plainly under five. I will not detail the more grotesque aspects of what you viewed, downloaded or kept. The search terms you used to find this material reveal your deliberate efforts to obtain some of the worst or near worst child abuse content.
This offending involved bewildering acts of rape and penetration of under-five and primary-school-aged children. It reveals how deeply embedded you were in the world of child abuse material. Your own created animated child abuse material adds to, and it seems feeds off, your own perverted interest in real live children being horribly abused. Many of the features referred to by the appellate courts in giving guidance to sentencing judges in assessing the gravity of child abuse material offending are present here or apposite, including the nature and content of the material, the very young age of the children and the gravity of the acts depicted.
The number of websites and child abuse material images accessed was relatively limited in your case compared to some examples of this crime and that is acknowledged. That said, each image of penetration of the child, for example, is the cruel rape of a child by an adult. Also, the focus in sentencing is on the depravity, not so much on the volume. While you did not trade on this material, it is hard not to perceive that your admitted years of viewing pornography and child pornography such as this did influence you engaging in the creation of the animated game for profit. As you said, you saw a gap in the market.
The nature of this crime of accessing child abuse, that is children suffering sexual abuse for the filming and photography. Photographing and uploading to the internet means the child's torment is almost permanently available and with an international scope the re-victimising of the children is a real consequence of the material being on the internet potentially indefinitely. This offending is serious in the context of the other forms of offending, and it must be separately acknowledged and appropriately punished.
The three State summary offences of knowingly installing, using and maintaining an optical surveillance device to record visually a private activity without consent relates to the three separate female victims who at some point resided next door to where you lived in Geelong. The victims were filmed by you at different times, but for the last two victims there was an overlap, indicating you would move the camera or train the lens from one room to another.
The first victim was filmed by you on nine occasions in the month between 3 August 2022 and 1 September 2022. The second victim was filmed 10 different times from 7 October 2022 to 31 May 2023. The final victim was filmed four times between 28 November 2022 to 24 May 2023. By saying they were filmed on that number of occasions, of course, that is the recordings that were kept on the device that you had. These recordings were, as I said, found kept on your camera microSD card. The camera was on a fixed tripod trained on the windows of the unsuspecting female neighbours. The nature of what you filmed and kept indicates you would set the video to record when the victim was at home. The fact that you kept the recordings is disturbing.
The comprehensive violation of the victims' privacy, the breach of trust that ought to exist between neighbours. That is, you will not spy on and record them in their bedrooms getting dressed and doing all that is naturally done in a bedroom, reveals how dreadful this offending was. It was obviously sexually motivated. It is plain that all aspects of females’ right to privacy and the right to be treated as autonomous and equal in this important area of social norms is something that you completely lost any sense of morality and what was acceptable behaviour. You treated women as sexual objects or objects for your perverted sexual gratification.
Again, all that bespeaks of a deep and concerning flaw in your personality. Each of the victims wrote victim impact statements setting out the disturbing effect on them. The victim of the first charge spoke of when she was contacted by police, of initially being confused which then turned into a deep sinking feeling. She felt so embarrassed that she cut herself off from her family and broke up with her boyfriend. She wrote - “I could not sleep and had to take several months off work as I was just constantly uncomfortable and was having panic attacks.”
She said that she made it a point to move house every three months as she could not trust neighbours not to invade her privacy. She said for a short time she did engage in some self-harm as she felt so uncomfortable in her body due to the crimes. She still does not feel comfortable in her own skin, especially as she wakes up every day not knowing who has these photos of her.
She wrote that this has been a costly matter for her as she lost earnings as she had to take time off her work. She had financial losses due to having to undergo and pay for psychologists and psychiatrists' appointments. As to the social impact of the crime she said;
“I cut off all my loved ones out of embarrassment. I couldn't attend Uni for several weeks and simply sat in my room for weeks with the blinds closed. I don't feel safe anywhere”.
The second victim wrote – “When I found out that you had been filming us, I was shocked and distressed.”
Knowing that you had made secret footage made her feel embarrassed and exposed and worried that you might share the contents with others. She has taken significant amounts of time to move on from this distress and anxiety. She said that she became quite paranoid, closing the blinds and making sure no one can see through windows and the like.
The third victim wrote;
“When I found out what my neighbour was doing, firstly, I was furious. I felt a level of betrayal and broken trust to do the right thing. I felt completely humiliated and exposed to this stranger I'd never even met. I felt completely disgusted by his actions. I packed my bags and left for my partner's house and booked in with my psychologist immediately.”
She says; “Now, to this day, I face paranoia that my new neighbours might be peeping. For months I kept my window and blinds completely shut.”
She said financially it has cost her money for therapy regarding this crime and extra travel to come from places further away from where she was living.
I mentioned earlier with respect to Charge 4, with the summary offences, they need to be properly acknowledged with separate punishment reflecting the gravity of what you did, the impact on the victims and your high level of moral culpability.
I have endeavoured to make clear the gravity of each of these crimes that you have pleaded guilty to. They were sophisticated, carried out over a protracted period with deliberative purpose and planning to satisfy your perverted sexual desires and to make money from and expand the market of other likeminded disturbed individuals.
Also, if I have not made it clear I do so now, that your moral culpability in respect of all these crimes is extremely high indeed. You knew what you were doing was wrong, but you distorted or ignored that and continued. You knew some websites had censored or had not accepted your game, but you pressed on uploading, expanding and profiteering. The high moral culpability for the accessing of the real-life child abuse material and the spying and filming on your female neighbours is self-evident. There is nothing that was put forward in any of the materials relied on by you that would operate to lower your moral culpability.
As to your personal circumstances, I have distilled relevant matters from your counsel's helpful written submissions and oral submissions, the report of the expert forensic psychologist, Mr Patrick Newton and the letters from your mother and uncle.
You are now 32, approaching shortly 33. You were the only child to your parents who divorced when you were two or three. There were six half-siblings from your parents’ other earlier relationships. After your parents divorced, you continued to reside with your mother, though you had regular contact with your father. Your mother re-partnered when you were about seven and her new partner was a truck driver and often absent from home. This saw you take on significant responsibilities assisting your mother in the case of half-siblings and a child born of that new relationship.
Your biological father died from a stroke when you were 12, which resulted in what was described as noteworthy grief. You continue to have a positive relationship with your mother and have lived with her since you were bailed on these offences. Your family life was one of great financial strain, however, you did not experience any abuse, neglect or mistreatment in childhood. You grew up in Geelong, attended primary and secondary school there. You were shy and anxious as a child, ad difficulty making friends which led to a range of behavioural problems.
In secondary school you performed poorly, frequently not attending and displaying some behavioural problems which did result in suspensions. You continued to struggle socially and were anxious. Your interest really was only in computing, but you otherwise lost interest in all other subjects and left school at Year 10. You have not done any post-school, secondary or any other training or qualification.
Your employment has mainly been unskilled in positions such as factory work, machine operation and labouring. Since December 2023 while on bail, you were employed in a timber company in Corio, and you impressed your employer. You have had four relationships in your adult life. The first was the most important. It commenced when you were quite young. From this relationship, which lasted about 18 months, you have two sons who are about 12 and 11. You separated shortly after the birth of the youngest. That resulted in you struggling with depression for some time. Your subsequent relationships did not last long, and Mr Newton noted your relationships have been marked by superficial intimacy and general instability.
You have remained active in your sons' lives - seeing them regularly, taking them to sports and social events. Since the offending, this has continued under supervision which has been challenging. Your mother wrote a letter indicating that you are close to her and you are dedicated to your own children. She spoke of what she sees as your better qualities. You have, and you will continue to, miss your children while in custody.
Both your mother and uncle were shocked at your offending seeing it as out of character. It seems they did not appreciate that you had turned to viewing or using pornography and then child pornography for some many, many years commencing as a teenager, as you revealed to the psychologist, Mr Newton.
The support of your family and your solid work history and the fact that you have no prior criminal convictions and none since being on bail, all this does, at one level, establish good foundations for rehabilitation once you are released into the community. However, at another level, the astute views and opinions of Mr Newton give rise to legitimate concerns as to whether you can remain offence free or whether you still are, and could, especially without treatment, be at risk for like child sex offending into the future.

Mr Newton assessed you in August 2024 and provided a report dated 16 August 2024 which was tendered at your plea. As to your presentation and approach to the psychological assessment, Mr Newton wrote as follows.
“Mr West engaged in the assessment process in a matter-of-fact manner. Rapport was superficial but adequate to the task at hand. He provided brief, relevant answers to my questions together with some elaboration on his experience. Mr West impressed as being moderately guarded and seemed to have particular difficulty discussing his offending and the issues that led to it.”[4]
[4] Psychological report authored by Dr Patrick Newton dated 16 August 2024 at [12].
As to the testing undertaken, that being the personality assessment screener and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the Paulhus Deception Scales, Mr Newton wrote the following.
“His answers to the [personality assessment screener] were characterised by a low level of disclosure of psychological problems although a marked risk for social alienation was noted. Similarly, on the MMPI-3 Mr West provided a profile disclosing only minimal levels of psychological distress, the only scale elevated relating to a history of behavioural problems in his youth.”[5]
[5] Ibid.
As to the Deception Scales, that suggested that your untroubled presentation on psychological testing is likely to be influenced by your poor psychological insight and limited self-awareness. Mr Newton – “I have taken this tendency into consideration when forming my opinions regarding him.'[6]
[6] Ibid.
Mr Newton noted that those matters that I have referred to, he set them out in his report as to your upbringing, schooling, relationships and work. Mr Newton then wrote under the heading 'Pornography' the following and I quote at length. He said;
“[you] reported an extensive and obsessional involvement with pornography started in [your] teens when [you] would access mainstream websites for masturbatory purposes. [You] said that [you] would view pornography several times a week: spending time browsing websites and viewing a variety of material. [You] did not report any particular preference at this stage, but simply viewing the material on the front pages… [You were] particularly prone to using it when [you] were feeling bored or lonely and it steadily became a more central part of [your] life and sexual repertoire. [You] added that [you] had continued to view pornography even when in a relationship.”[7]
[7] Ibid at [27].
You went on that search for novel material, you found a range of more extreme material and in your words, you inadvertently viewed child abuse material which you found quite shocking and “made [you] feel sick”.[8] But by following links on pornographic sites you came into contact with games based on sexualised themes. You found little in them of sexual interest but noted that the computer coding was relatively simple and in some cases the creators had made significant profit and this piqued your interest. You investigated further and found that games around what you called 'taboo topics' such as incest reaped the greatest financial rewards.
[8] Ibid at [28].
You told Mr Newton that after you became involved in the game, the focus of your pornography use changed significantly. Firstly, the frequency and the intensity of your involvement with pornography increased markedly with you viewing material daily and sometimes masturbating to it several times a day. Secondly, through your interactions with other players of the game via Discord groups you set up, you were regularly exposed to child abuse material, both in discussions of the game itself and specific child abuse material images and links were sent to you.
In this context, rather than evoking shock, you found yourself increasingly drawn to the image, adding – “It opened Pandora's box, and I went down the rabbit hole”.[9] You clarified that you had subsequently searched extensively for diverse child abuse material, viewing it and masturbating to it. While the focus had been on females between 12 and 18, you acknowledged that you had viewed images of very young infants as well. You said that you had directly searched for child abuse material following links to find it, download it and save it.
[9] Ibid at [30].
As to your mental health, Mr Newton noted a limited history of any psychological disturbance, being the grief at your father's death and some mild depression when your relationship with your sons' mother ended and reactive distress on being arrested. You did not seek counselling at that time or at any time Mr Newton was of the view that you were not suffering from any depression or the like. He thought your mental state displayed a level of equanimity greater than most given the seriousness of your legal predicament.
Discussing your personality traits, Mr Newton noted the following;
“Mr West's moral reasoning is dominated by a focus on instrumental and pragmatic considerations. That is, he is prone to make decisions more based on self-interest and the capacity for a course of action to meet his own goals than by references to socially endorsed values and worries. This is exemplified by the importance he gave to the financial reward which the games brought him while simultaneously downplaying or ignoring the prohibition of incest and underage sexual interactions minimising them as mere taboos”.[10]
[10]Psychological report authored by Dr Patrick Newton dated 16 August 2024 at [45].
To some extent, such perspectives on moral reasoning were likely ceded by financial and other problems which marked out your early years. They likely developed at times as a means of coping. While such perspectives may then have had some adaptive elements, they subsequently became a generalised aspect of your personality with problematic consequences.
You were assessed as intelligent at the high end of the normal range with full cognitive capacity. Mr Newton noted your social skills were not well developed. He considered your self-centredness and lack of interpersonal empathy to be concerning. Your immersion in online pornography, which he noted continued to the time of his assessment and this being your focus of sexual interest, meant that in his expert view your personality traits were beyond normal levels and encompassed the description of prominent traits of narcissistic and antisocial personality.
In discussions of your sexual adjustments, he wrote, and I quote at length again because this issue is fundamental. At paragraph 51, he said;
“[your] sexual adjustment revealed a number of seriously problematic aspects…While [you described yourself] as being preferentially attracted to adult women, [your discussions with Mr Newton] indicated that [you] extended this term to encompass underage individuals including both pubescent and peri pubescent stages of development. [You] explicitly acknowledged that [you] had experienced arousal at material depicting underage individuals as young as 12. [You] acknowledged openly that [you] had masturbated to materials depicting such individuals and had fantasised about paedophilic themes while doing so. Further, Mr West acknowledged that he had viewed and searched for unequivocally paedophilic material depicting children at a very young age (including infants). While he denied arousal to such images of prepubescent children, his obsessional interest in such material and the ages of those depicted in the images combined to suggest it is more likely than not, that he also engaged in paedophilic fantasies. That is, his denials seem implausible.”[11]
[11]Psychological report authored by Dr Patrick Newton dated 16 August 2024 at [51].
Mr Newton went on - the extensive time that you had spent creating an online pornographic game, a game “focused on incestuous engagement with underage individuals, some of whom were also reported to appear prepubescent. Several aspects of [your] conduct with regard to the game raised particular serious concerns”. [12]
[12]Ibid at [52].
First, the material you created for the game and shared through it was clearly deviant, encompassing scenarios depicting diverse incestuous child abuse including degrading and non-consenting behaviours.
Secondly, you engaged with this material actively and in a variety of ways. Your conduct incorporates not only the manipulation of image files but also the creation of the written scenarios expressing deviant fantasies, with themes frequently the focus of the sex offenders population.
Thirdly, your behaviour included active engagement with others online, both initiating and responding to requests for deviant conduct.
Fourthly, the engagement was both prolonged and frequent in nature, pointing to entrenched and obsessional deviance.
Finally, the consideration that you undertook most of this activity for profit, and despite the awareness that you were pushing your limits, adds an additional locus of concern to his conduct.
He adds that you are aware that your conduct was wrong, but it is also evident from your discussions with Mr Newton that you continue to attribute precocious sexuality to underage females. In particular, while you could accurately state the age of consent, it was evident that you believed that young people were able, from at least the onset of puberty, to choose to participate in sexual activities with adults. That they could do so without suffering harm and that they may even enjoy the experience. In turn, such beliefs have led him to downplay the gravity of his conduct.
In the risk assessment undertaken by Mr Newton, using the well-recognised testing tool of Static-99 revised, you, Mr West, were found to be in the
medium-to-high risk range. Mr Newton then undertook an assessment using the RSVP Version 2 tool, which considers a wide range of factors, both historical, dynamic and also protective factors. That assessment, which relies on Mr Newton's extensive clinical experience and judgment, also found you were at a medium to high range of risk of reoffending.
In my view, this conclusion of your level of risk being at the concerning moderate to high risk of further sexual offending is, in my assessment of all the material, accurate and is a finding that I comfortably adopt.
Mr Newton noted in his opinion the following.
“[Your] maladaptive personality traits are not sufficiently severe to meet the threshold for a diagnosis of personality disorder. Nevertheless, they fall outside the normal spectrum and are noted [as I said] as prominent traits of narcissistic and antisocial personality.
These personality traits constitute a key risk factor for continued behavioural problems including further involvement in the criminal justice system. Accordingly, the provision of appropriate treatment is indicated to arrest their development.”[13]
[13]Psychological report authored by Dr Patrick Newton dated 16 August 2024 at [65].
Mr Newton concluded, you would certainly meet the criteria for diagnosis of other specific paraphilic disorder, being hebephilia. Moreover, there is a strong likelihood that you would meet the diagnostic criteria for paedophilic disorder, non-exclusive type, sexually attracted to females.
Mr Newton was of the view that you needed specialist offence specific treatment of an extended duration, and this ought to commence as soon as is practicable.
Many of the sentencing purposes, as set out in the Commonwealth Crimes Act[14] and the Victorian Sentencing Act, are for these offences committed by you as the offending self-evidently is of great importance.[15] The authorities make this clear. Deterrence to others is of primary importance and given the extent of the offending, its deliberative planning and your lack of insight and the risk profile and what is contained in Mr Newton's report, there is a role for deterrence to you, notwithstanding your lack of prior criminal history.
[14]Crimes Act (n 2).
[15]1991 (Vic).
Also important is ensuring the sentence is of the severity appropriate to all the circumstances of the offence and is of a length that adequately punishes you for the offending. There must be for the State offences but also generally practical denunciation of your dreadful crimes.
What is less straightforward is what is to be made of your prospects of rehabilitation and what weight ought to be given to protection of the community, given your moderate to high risk of reoffending profile.
These matters are impacted not just by the level of risk but also your lack of real insight into the gravity and harm of what you were involved in and created. There is not a lot that I can discern, even accepting your mother and uncle's sentiments, that would allow me to see that you are truly contrite for your crimes.
Your remorse, which is another slightly different concept, though I note that the Crimes Act refers both to contrition and rehabilitation.[16] But these matters, remorse, were not put as weighty matters in your counsel's considered and helpful submissions.
[16]Crimes Act (n 2), s16A.
You are not to be further punished for any absence of true remorse, but it is not available for mitigation, and it does not give rise to how solid, or it does not assist in an assessment of how solid, your prospects of reform will be on release. That said, I acknowledge the difficulty of predicting how you will approach living back in the community which will necessarily be years away.
There is a need for weight to be accorded to the broad concept of protection of the community. That is, to children who may become victims of child abuse material or victims of offenders encouraged by the normalisation of sexual activity with children via the child abuse material that they may obtain and also protection to women generally, especially perhaps to neighbours.
There are mitigatory factors that do very much weigh in your favour, the most important being your plea of guilty which came at a very early stage. You were never going to contest the central charges. Your plea has facilitated the course of justice and means your sentence must be less than it otherwise would have been. Connected to that, and of late on your own, you have negotiated and settled significant proceeds of crime or pecuniary penalty matters between yourself and the Commonwealth. I can and do take into account the high levels of cooperation in resolving those connected proceedings so quickly.
Your plea of guilty also impacts on the statutory scheme, which requires mandatory minimum head sentences to be imposed for Charges 1 and 6. The provisions of s6AAB and 6AAC[17] have been subject of analysis, and in effect guidelines provided by the High Court in Hurt v The King; Hurt v The King and Delzotto v The King[18] are set out in the written submissions of the prosecution. The High Court held the effect of a statutory minimum should be approached in the same way as a statutory maximum penalty. Those two fix the ends of the sentencing yardstick. he prosecution submissions, which I quote, set out:
“The court held that a statutory minimum should be approached in the same way as a statutory maximum in that they both fix ends of the sentencing yardstick referred to in Markarian v The Queen.[19] In that sense a mandatory minimum sentence prescribed in s6AAB like a statutory maximum penalty serves two purposes. First, it confines the power of the court to prohibit it from imposing sentences less than the statutory minimum though subject to s16AAC. Second, it sets the beginning of the yardstick against which the offending to be sentenced can be assessed and within which the court is to exercise its sentencing discretion to determine the appropriate sentence.”[20]
[17]Crimes Act (n 2).
[18][2024] HCA 8.
[19](2005) 228 CLR 357.
[20]Prosecution Submissions on Sentence dated 6 December 2024 at [57].
However, there are the important statutory provisions enabling the court to impose a sentence less than the statutory minimum. Section 16AAC(2) and (3)[21] make it clear that I can fix a sentence less than the minimum term if I consider that I cannot properly recognise or factor in your plea of guilty and/or your cooperation. Thus, according to the High Court, I must first consider the appropriate sentence utilising the methodology of instinctive synthesis except for the plea and any cooperation. I then consider whether the mechanism in s16AAC leads me to consider a sentence below the mandatory minimum term as being of appropriate severity for the offending.[22]
[21]Crimes Act (n 2).
[22]Ibid.
Here there needs to be, in my view, different outcomes for Charge 1 and Charge 6. Different outcomes arise when I adopt the approach as I have just described, synthesising from what the High Court has said.
So first, while by reason of it not being child abuse material with real children, yours is not the most serious that could be said of Charge 1. But that said, the sheer gravity of the offending in Charge 1 and all the other factors that I have referred to, when I engage in the instinctive synthesis relating to the nature and circumstances of the offending and also to the particular features and aspects of you as the offender, including your lack of insight and risk profile, it leaves me very clearly and comfortably above the statutory minimum, such that when the discount allowances for your plea of guilty and cooperation with authorities are acknowledged and factored in, the sentence remains above the statutory minimum.
The prosecution urged this outcome, and your counsel urged that it not be above the mandatory minimum.
As for Charge 6, as discussed in my analysis of the nature and circumstance of the offence, it was by a bare margin above the threshold for the aggravated form of this offence. The offending, that is the nature of what was transmitted, the recipients and all the circumstances including the significant overlap in the offending behaviours, means that this was an example of that offence at the lowest end of the spectrum. That being the case, in my overall synthesis of the offending and you as the offender, it means to properly acknowledge your plea and your cooperation I need to go and I am authorised to go, in my view, below the statutory minimum.
The other statutory regime is that the presumption of concurrency is displaced, and I must order cumulation unless I consider justice requires some moderation of full cumulation. In my view, a sentence with full cumulation of any, let alone all offences, would lead to an outlier of a total sentence. Rather, I will examine to what I have referred to as the overlap in the offending, but at the same time I will acknowledge parliament's intent that there be cumulation in Commonwealth sexual offences. And that while there is overlap in the substance of a number of offences, each offence is directed at a different mischief and endeavours to deal with a particular aspect of child abuse material offending.
I have considered carefully cumulation and concurrency and the interactions between the Commonwealth and the separate State offences. I have then stepped back and ensured the proposed sentences in total meet the totality of the offending that you committed in a just and proportionate way.
Sentencing under the Commonwealth Crimes Act[23] is diabolically complicated. When there are State sentences to impose, the complexity is further elevated. So, doing the best I can, I impose the following sentencing orders. As is the usual practice, I will commence with the State sentences for the three summary offences.
[23]Crimes Act (n 2).
For the summary offence Charge 29, you are sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 10 months.
For the summary offence Charge 31, you are sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 10 months.
For the summary offence Charge 33, you are sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 10 months.
I order that four months of summary offence Charge 31 and Charge 33 be cumulative upon each other and upon the term of imprisonment on summary offence Charge 29. The total effective State sentence is therefore 18 months.

I will order that the State sentences commence today. I decline to fix a non‑parole period for the State offences in the exercise of discretion permitted given the full sentence that I am about to announce which will include a non‑parole period.
My intention is that the Commonwealth sentence on Charge 1 commence 12 months after the State sentences have commenced or 12 months has been served. That in effect means each of the State summary charges adds four months to the overall total effective sentence. So, the State sentence of 18 months starts now. I think it is the only time I can use a date. That is 1 April 2025.
On the indictment Charge 1, I sentence you to a term of imprisonment of six years, to commence 12 months after the State sentence commences.
Charge 2, the sentence of imprisonment is three years. My intention is that 12 months of that will be cumulative. Thus, the sentence on Charge 2 commences two years before the expiration of the sentence on Charge 1.
For Charge 3, the sentence is two years and six months. My intention is 10 months of that sentence be cumulative. Thus, the sentence on Charge 3 commences 20 months prior to the expiration of the sentence on Charge 2.
Charge 4, the sentence of imprisonment is three years and six months. My intention is to cumulate 18 months. Thus, the sentence on Charge 4 commences two years prior to the expiration of the sentence on Charge 3.
Charge 5, the sentence of imprisonment is 15 months. My intention is to cumulate six months. Thus, the sentence on Charge 5 commences nine months prior to the expiration of the sentence on Charge 4.
Charge 6, the sentence of imprisonment is three years and six months. My intention is to cumulate six months. Thus, the sentence on Charge 6 commences three years before the expiration of the sentence on Charge 5.
Charge 7, the sentence of imprisonment is nine months. My intention is to cumulate one month. Thus, the sentence on Charge 7 commences eight months before the expiration of the sentence on Charge 6.
Charge 8, the sentence of imprisonment is 13 months. My intention is to cumulate two months. Thus, the sentence on Charge 8 commences 11 months prior to the expiration of the sentence on Charge 7.
The total effective sentence is 139 months or 11 years and seven months.
I order and fix a non-parole period of eight years and four months. The non‑parole period is fixed at what I consider justice requires you to serve in prison. There are no fixed formulas and the longer the sentence, the closer in percentage terms the non-parole period can get to the head sentence.
The potential period of over three years, in my view, is sufficient and appropriate for resettling under supervision in the community. That said, when or if you are granted parole is for others, not the court.
You have served time on remand awaiting this sentence. That time has been calculated or reckoned. It is 113 days. That figure having been reckoned, I now declare it is part of the sentence that I have just imposed, and I will ensure that this declaration is entered into the records of the court, so the prison authorities are left in no doubt that you have already served 113 days of the sentence I have just imposed.
In terms of what sentence I would have imposed had you pleaded not guilty and been found guilty by a jury of these offences, the total effective sentence would have been 14 years with a non-parole period of 11 years.
As a consequence of the crimes you committed, you must be placed on the Sex Offenders Register. The period of time you must remain on the Sex Offenders Register is life.
- - -

JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MULLALY
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	09 December 2024
DATE OF SENTENCE:	01 April 2025
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v West
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2025] VCC 414

APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Ms H. Baxter	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Ms S. Buckley	H & L Legal