It's a sick joke
THIS is a smirk that will revolt any parent.
After being convicted of transmitting child pornography - so graphic prosecutors would not disclose the details - Port Douglas pensioner Kenneth Roy Lang, 70, sits laughing outside Cairns District Court yesterday.
Just hours earlier, he was sentenced to 12 months’ jail but was released immediately because he had served four months in custody awaiting his court date.
He had pleaded guilty to five counts of transmitting child pornography material and two counts of transmitting child abuse material, after sending 27 sexually explicit text messages to a woman in Cairns while he was holidaying in Thailand in December 2006.
It also emerged that in 1992, Lang pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual penetration of a child aged 10 to 16 years.
On that occasion, he served six months of an 18-month jail sentence.
Yesterday, the court heard Lang told police he had not touched a young person in Australia or overseas since his previous conviction in Melbourne.
He is the first Australian convicted for sending child pornography from his mobile phone.
Lang has also been ordered to submit his DNA to a national police database and will be placed on the national sex offenders' register.
Commonwealth prosecutor Jane Bentley did not read the detail of the text messages to the court but said they included, "graphic descriptions of the defendant engaging in sexual intercourse with Thai children aged between 12 and 15 years".
In sentencing, Judge Sarah Bradley also refused to read the content of the messages to the court because they were "revolting".
"They are a graphic depiction of sexual and violent abuse of children," Judge Bradley said.
Lang was arrested by Australian Federal Police at Cairns airport in July last year, when he was attempting to travel back to Thailand.
Ms Bentley said Lang admitted sending the messages and said they were "pure fantasy and phone sex".
"He said he knew images of child pornography were illegal but he didn't know 'this sort of thing' was illegal," she said.
In his defence, barrister Sandra Pearson said her client sent the text messages in response to messages from a woman he had met through a personal ad.
Ms Pearson said the woman, who later went to the police about the content of the messages, sent an SMS to the defendant telling him to "tell it filthy, the filthier the better".
"He (Lang) can see how right-minded members of the community would see the messages as abhorrent," Ms Pearson said.
She also told the court that the media attention her client received as a result of the child porn charges meant he had been verbally abused and physically assaulted on several occasions, and would likely have to leave the Far North.
Lang was also given a three-year good behaviour bond.
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Outside court: Kenneth Roy Lang, 70.
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