KJ Elizabeth

Depression causes you to download at child porn? Give me a break. This was the claim made by a barrister for the former NSW chief prosecutor in court today at his sentence appeal hearing.

I can accept that depression might lead one to an internet addiction (or vice versa), but to claim that being depressed made his client compulsively download 400 images and 30 videos of child pornography, and then to compare this to the compulsion to gamble, is rather far fetched. There is a known link between gambling and depression, but when one looses their moral compass and breaks the law to feed their gambling habit, that’s the addiction taking hold, not the depression.

Depression can lead to a lack of concern for ones self and others, but in my view to claim that depression is the reason this man downloaded so much child porn, is just plain offensive. Did the depression cause him to become sexually aroused by the child porn as well? Or perhaps the depression was caused by his desire to download child porn in the first place.

Depression may impair your judgment to some degree, but it does not erode your ability to know the difference between right and wrong. This case, to me, is another example of an increasing trend to use the very serious illness of depression as a scapegoat and mask for other serious issues. I’m not suggesting that this man was not depressed and did not have an internet addition. I am suggesting that it is possible that the depression and internet addition played role, but these two factors alone cannot explain why he downloaded child pornography. In passing off behaviour such as this as the result of depression, the underlying reasons of why the former NSW chief prosecutor really downloaded child porn will not be addressed.

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