6 weeks' jail for man who downloaded child abuse material from dark web; judge rejects excuse he was 'bored'
SINGAPORE — Claiming that he was bored as he had to stay home for long periods amid Covid-19, Randy Rosigit turned to looking at pornography more frequently, including child abuse material. Several of the children depicted were aged below 10.
Rosigit, now 28, was sentenced to six weeks' jail on Monday (Jan 9) after pleading guilty to one charge of possessing or gaining access to child abuse material. Two other charges were taken into consideration.
The court heard that Rosigit, an Indonesian, grew curious about child pornography in 2020. He searched for it on the dark web on May 7 that year.
He downloaded a browser allowing users to access the dark web and used bitcoin to access a child porn website but he failed to gain the login details.
In June 2021, Rosigit joined a Telegram group chat in which pornography, including child abuse material, was shared. He downloaded some material.
On Oct 22, 2021, the police raided his home. Court documents did not state how they were alerted to Rosigit's conduct.
A total of 119 obscene videos were found on his computer and handphone. Two still images and six videos depicting child abuse were also found on his portable drive and handphone. One video was over 30 minutes long.
For his offences, Deputy Public Prosecutor Etsuko Lim sought three to four months' jail.
"What was to him merely a means of satiating his curiosity was to 17 children a horrifying campaign of abuse," she said.
What was to him merely a means of satiating his curiosity was to 17 children a horrifying campaign of abuse.
She urged the court to consider not just the number of items of child abuse material he had, but also the length of the videos and nature of the sex acts depicted in them.
"All but one of the six videos were more than a minute long and one of the videos was even a staggering duration of up to 38 minutes long," she said.
Rosigit's lawyer Dhillon Surinder Singh of Dhillon and Panoo LLC sought a sentence of four weeks' jail.
He said that Rosigit had been living alone here since 2012 as his parents are in Jakarta, Indonesia.
He started his own business in 2019, which was badly affected by the pandemic. The business failure along with the death of his grandmother and travel restrictions affected him greatly.
Mr Singh added that Rosigit suffered constant low moods when he was always at home during the Covid-19 partial lockdown here in 2020, imposed to get people to stay home.
"One thing led to another and against his better judgement he began surfing the internet and looking at pornography more frequently because of his boredom of being stuck at home," he said.
However, District Judge Kamala Ponnampalam said that she was not persuaded by this, adding that his offences continued well beyond the partial lockdown period.
In sentencing, the judge considered factors such as the nature of the material and number of clips.
Anyone convicted of possessing or gaining access to child abuse material can be jailed for up to five years and fined or caned.
