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Offender Databases Kevin Ward

Kevin Norman Ward

Alias

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Offences

Possession of child pornography in Invercargill between March 2003 and March 2004

Victims

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Offender Affiliations

.

Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1979

Current Location

Was on remand

Parole/Release Dates

To be updated

Background
From The Southland Times May 24th 2005
A 26-year-old Invercargill man who admitted downloading pictures of children as young as seven involved in sexual acts will hear on Friday whether he will be sentenced for using that material for gain.

Kevin Norman Ward, clerical worker, appeared before Judge Peter Butler for a defended hearing in Invercargill District Court yesterday. He admitted nine charges of possessing objectionable material after Internal Affairs searched his home on March 29 last year. The arrest followed a tip to Internal Affairs by a Canadian porn investigation group which had picked up on Ward's activity under his Internet user name "little-willow". However, through defence counsel David Slater, Ward denied 10 charges of making the content available to others for gain.

Crown prosecutor Sarah McKenzie said Ward had accessed the content through the Kazaa peer sharing programme. Kazaa is specifically designed to allow users to trade all kinds of media including music, videos and images. They can do this unsupervised over the Internet via a "shared folder" system. Ward had built up a collection of objectionable material in his Kazaa shared folder in order to increase his trading capabilities to get more, Ms McKenzie said.

Internal Affairs inspector Paul Duke gave evidence that Kazaa called this a "participation rate," with a higher rate allowing a greater, more efficient search hook to be cast. Ms McKenzie said Ward had been searching for content with commands such as "pedo, pre teen, young incest, kiddy slut and underage" between March 1, 2003, and March 28, 2004. Mr Slater contested whether Ward having the material, downloaded through Kazaa, in his shared folder meant he intended trading it to others for his gain. Other than downloading the material he had not actively set out to provide it to others because a Kazaa member sharing his or her own information was by default.

Mr Duke said the specific file names accessed by Ward, including child porn code names, pointed to high popularity exchanges for specific users which would increase Ward's participation rate. There were settings on Kazaa software where users could elect to not share their files if they chose to but this would affect their ability to access files for themselves, Mr Duke said. Judge Butler reserved his decision until Friday.

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Corrections and Additional Information
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