Prosecutors have told a court they do not accept a psychological report that a man produced child abuse images as therapy after being the victim of children's entertainer and convicted paedophile Ric Marshall.
The 61-year-old man — who cannot be named for legal reasons — appeared in the South Australian District Court ahead of sentencing for two counts of producing child exploitation material over three years.
He pleaded guilty to both offences in February.
The court heard he made child abuse images at his home using cut-outs from magazines, which was described as a "collage".
Laura Elkins, the lawyer for the man, told Judge Michael Burnett that when her client was in year 8, he was abused by Marshall while working on a play at the Cottage Theatre.
"This incident was exceptionally traumatic," she said.
"He made the cut-outs because he thought it might help him deal with the sexual abuse that he, himself suffered as a child."
Marshall — who hosted the Super Duper Flying Fun Show on commercial TV in the 1970s — was given a 25-year home detention order for the repeated sexual abuse of four boys.
He was found mentally unfit to stand trial, but he was described by the court as an "evil man through and through".
He died in 2019.
Ms Elkins said her client told his psychologist he had planned to use his own image as a teenager to create the collage but could not find them, before deciding to use magazine cut-outs.
"He states that if he had been able to find his old photographs, it would have been him in the child exploitation material," she said.
The court heard the psychologist accepted he did not make the images for sexual gratification but for "therapeutic purposes".
But prosecutor Tori Lauder said she did not accept the man created the images as therapy and his criminal history showed it was for "some form of sexual gratification".
"But we do accept in the circumstances that this matter does fall at the lowest end of the scale for producing child exploitation material," she said.
She told the court that the man had a 2004 conviction for trying to entice a child into committing an indecent act and 2008 convictions for attempted indecent assault and gross indecency.
The court heard his most recent offending also breached a suspended sentence for failing to update information on the child sex offender's register and breaching an intervention order.
The man will be sentenced next month.
