Man gets jail for possessing child porn, downloaded it from Telegram chat group

SINGAPORE: A man who “grew curious” about child pornography searched for it on the dark web and later joined a Telegram group chat where obscene material including child abuse material was shared.

He was later found with two images and six videos of child pornography depicting children as young as six years old, along with 119 obscene videos.

Randy Rosigit, 28, was sentenced to six weeks’ jail on Monday (Jan 9).

He pleaded guilty to one charge of possessing obscene material, with another two charges taken into consideration.

The court heard that Randy, an Indonesian national and Singapore permanent resident, grew “curious” about child porn in 2020.

He searched for it on the dark web on May 7, 2020 and downloaded a browser that anonymises its users’ web traffic.

He used the browser to find a search engine where he could access websites containing child abuse material. He paid in Bitcoin for full access to one such website, but did not receive any login details. 

Around June 2021, Randy joined a group chat on application Telegram. Users of the chat group shared pornography, including child abuse material.

Despite knowing that the members of the group often shared such material, Randy stayed in the chat and even downloaded some material.

The police raided Randy’s home in Upper Serangoon View on Oct 22, 2021 after receiving information about him. 

They seized his devices and found a total of 119 obscene videos that did not involve children. 

Two still images and six videos of child pornography were found in Randy’s portable drive and handphone. They depicted girls who appeared to be below the ages of between six and 14.

The prosecutor sought a jail term of between three and four months for Randy.

LAWYER SAYS PANDEMIC AFFECTED CLIENT

Lawyer S S Dhillon asked instead for four weeks’ jail. He said his client’s business was badly affected in April 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

On top of this, he could not fly home to be with his parents in Jakarta due to travel restrictions, nor to pay his last respects to his grandmother when she died.

During the “circuit breaker” period when leaving one’s home for non-essential activity was forbidden, Randy was always at home and in low moods as he had no contact with his friends, said the lawyer.

“It was during this period that his life took a drastic turn for the worst,” said Mr Dhillon. He said Randy began drinking alcohol more than usual and began surfing the Internet “against his better judgment”.

He also began looking at porn more frequently because of “his boredom of being stuck at home”, said the lawyer.

He said his client was not trying to justify his “morally reprehensible behaviour”, but “such was his emotional state caused by the pandemic and its attendant side effects like loss of business and no contact with friends (leading) to excessive alcohol intake”.

Mr Dhillon said his client was a victim of fraud as he did not receive the login details for the child abuse website.

The judge said she was not persuaded that the pandemic or circuit breaker were significant contributing factors to Randy’s offending behaviour. She allowed him to defer his sentence.

For possessing child abuse material, he could have been jailed for up to five years and fined or caned.