A prosecutor has blasted the suggestion a recluse's pornography addiction led him down "the rabbit hole" of viewing child abuse material, which is "a different beast entirely".
"Child abuse material is not at the sinister end of pornography," federal prosecutor Cecilia Pascoe told the ACT Supreme Court on Friday.
Ms Pascoe made that submission as Taylor Cameron Dean, 24, faced a sentence hearing over four offences.
Dean had previously pleaded guilty to the charges, which were laid after he possessed, accessed and transmitted child abuse material between May 2019 and November 2020.
The court heard Dean had possessed 604 unique files, accessed 56, and transmitted 20 by uploading them to his Microsoft OneDrive account.
His lawyer, Edward Chen, urged Acting Justice Peter Berman to impose an intensive correction order.
Mr Chen told the court his client had, at the time of his offending, been living with his mother "without any meaningful human interaction".
"He watched pornography for hours," Mr Chen said, referring to evidence Dean had previously given.
The lawyer added Dean had wanted to seek help to stop accessing child abuse material for some time before his arrest, but the offender had been "too ashamed to do it".
Within 24 hours of his arrest, however, he booked an appointment to begin counselling.
Since then, Mr Chen told the court, Dean had "completely transformed his life" by obtaining work, meeting his wife and getting married.
One of the reasons Mr Chen urged Acting Justice Berman to spare Dean time behind bars was that the 24-year-old's wife would struggle managing her health challenges and surviving financially without him.
But Ms Pascoe pushed for a sentence involving full-time imprisonment, arguing Commonwealth child sex offenders were typically incarcerated and there was nothing that made this case exceptional.
"The offender's wife has survived most of her life without the offender's assistance," Ms Pascoe said.
The prosecutor also told the court there was nothing special about Dean having stopped looking at "highly depraved" child abuse material in the wake of his arrest.
"The offender is legally obligated to stop viewing child abuse material," she said.
Ms Pascoe disagreed with Mr Chen's suggestion that most of Dean's crimes were low-level examples, describing the offences as serious and pointing out they spanned a period of 18 months.
"This offending was not a blip," she said.
Acting Justice Berman, who said he had initially hoped to sentence Dean on Friday, ultimately said he would have to do so next Thursday instead.
"I don't know what I'm going to do yet," he said as Dean's wife sat in the public gallery with her head in her hands.
