Lin Zhenyang was sentenced to 23 months’ jail and two strokes of the cane. He will begin his sentence on Feb 24. - ST
SINGAPORE: An accountant who claimed to have sought relief from his unhappiness at work by watching pornographic materials was found to have amassed some 10,000 hours of materials over two decades.
On Feb 10, Lin Zhenyang, 40, pleaded guilty to one charge of possessing child sexual abuse materials. Another charge for the possession of 12,896 obscene films was taken into consideration for his sentencing.
Lin was sentenced to 23 months’ jail and two strokes of the cane. He will begin his sentence on Feb 24.
He was arrested on Oct 15, 2021, after more than 8,000 videos and images containing child sexual abuse materials were found in his possession.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Sheldon Lim said Lin began his habit of downloading explicit materials on the shared family computer when he was 16, and started joining groups on messaging platform Telegram sometime around 2021, after finding out he was able to download files in their entirety.
Lin’s lawyer Muslim Albakri said the discovery of groups on Telegram had essentially “opened the floodgates” for Lin, who had already been using pornographic to cope with stress at work and in his personal life.
Lin was later found to be a member of 500 groups on the platform, although the prosecution could not establish how many of the groups had distributed the pornographic materials.
From these groups, Lin had downloaded pornographic materials in bulk every morning before work. He would then skim through the downloaded materials when he returned home and watch some on his computer.
During mitigation, Albakri said Lin had never sought out, consumed, or had any inclination towards child pornography.
Lin claimed the child pornography had accumulated as he had downloaded the explicit materials without discrimination and his habit snowballed.
Albakri said it was indifference rather than interest that led to the materials being found in Lin’s possession upon his arrest.
But the prosecution had told the court that child sexual abuse materials made up nearly 40 per cent of all explicit materials found on Lin.
Court documents showed that some of the victims in the videos Lin possessed were as young as three to five months old.
The prosecution added that Lin knew some of the materials he had downloaded contained child sexual abuse videos or images, but he did not delete them.
Those convicted of possessing or gaining access to child abuse material can be jailed for up to five years, and fined or caned. - The Straits Times/ANN
