Bunbury child abuse: 69-year-old man to front court after child abuse material allegedly found on his phone

An elderly man from the State’s South West has been arrested and charged after he was allegedly found with child abuse material. The 69-year-old Bunbury man is expected to front court on Thursday charged with one count of possessing the vile and abusive material. The arrest comes a week after a joint investigation between WA’s Joint Anti Child Exploration Team and Australian Federal Police charged 45 alleged offenders with 149 charges relating to the access, possession, and distribution of child exploitation material. In the lead up to national child protection week, the 69-year-old was arrested on August 29 as part of the joint investigation, dubbed Operation Tamworth. Police allegedly identified the man after investigating a report from the United States’ National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which alerted officers to a person in WA accessing child abuse material. Officers were quick to respond to the alert, and raided the man’s South West home where JACET investigators allegedly found the explicit child abuse material on his phone. The device was seized by officers for further forensic examination. The 69-year-old is expected to front Bunbury Magistrates Court on Thursday charged with one count of possession of child exploitation material. The maximum penalty for this offence is seven years imprisonment. AFP Detective Sergeant Ross Hinscliff said the charges demonstrated the AFP’s commitment to investigate and charge offenders believed to be involved in child exploitation and sexual abuse. “This work is gut-wrenching, but our investigators are relentless in their pursuit of anyone sharing or accessing child abuse material, and they will follow-up any information to bring these people to justice,” he said. Police Commissioner Col Blanch said on Wednesday he holds “grave concerns” for the officers working on Operation Tamworth and investigating the dozens of “vile” child sex offenders. “It’s extremely confronting and firstly can I say, I have grave concerns around the welfare of my officers who spent a lot of their time dealing with these. . .vile human beings,” he told 6PR. “Our officers deal with them and they have to look at the material in bold, they have to hear the stories directly from the children who have been subject to the abuse — and that is the most difficult job, I believe, in the police force today.”