A former NSW Police sergeant who accessed about 5,000 child sexual abuse images will spend at least four months in prison.
Michael Anthony Mannah was arrested in January 2021 after activity on his iPhone and home internet services was intercepted under a warrant.
In September last year, a jury found the 50-year-old guilty of using a carriage service to access child abuse material, which related to a period of more than five months leading up to the arrest.
He was found not guilty of possessing or controlling child abuse material.
The NSW District Court heard the vast majority of the approximately 5,000 images Mannah accessed did not depict sexual activity, but people under the age of 18 posing in a sexually suggestive manner, including naked and in swimwear.
The court was told about 300 of the files were cartoons, anime or computer-generated imagery.
Judge Ian Bourke today accepted Mannah's purpose in searching for the material was personal use and not the sale or dissemination to others, nor did he take any steps to save the images.
But in sentencing, the judge said the offending occurred over a "considerable period" and noted offences of this kind were not "victimless" because real children are abused in the process of creating the material, which remains online for a long time.
While Mannah denied having a sexual interest in children, the jury heard the intercepted internet activity suggested the user wasn't "just accidentally going to one page" and there was a "consistent" return to a number of websites.
Mannah told a psychiatrist he had "never seen" the images, but Judge Bourke didn't accept that denial and said there was no evidence of contrition or remorse, but concluded the images were not the "primary target" of his internet searches.
"These kinds of offences feed the market for the exploitation of children," the judge said.
Mannah was handed a total sentence of 12-months, but will spend four months of that in custody under a conditional release order.
The judge accepted prison would be more onerous for Mannah because he is a former police officer and due to the impact on his wife and two children.
He accepted Mannah had "reasonably positive" prospects of rehabilitation.
Mannah's charges were the result of an investigation by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, which referred a brief of evidence to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
He faced a maximum penalty of 15 years behind bars.
