NZ man jailed over grotesque ‘pseudo’ child sexual abuse images
Tuesday, 20 May 2025
A New Zealand man has been jailed for 5½ years for his role as one of the few facilitators worldwide of a website that distributed thousands of computer-generated child sexual exploitation images.
Donald James Sarratt, 35, was sentenced on Tuesday in the Wellington District Court.
He was caught in a joint operation between United States authorities and New Zealand police.
The name of the website was suppressed due to ongoing investigations and Judge Noel Sainsbury also suppressed descriptions of the material because he said he did not want deranged people obtaining some sort of gratification from them.
Sarratt pleaded guilty to distributing objectionable child sexual abuse material and possessing it. He had no previous convictions.
Prosecutor Wilber Tupua said Sarratt should not have credit for previous good character because the offending spanned nine years. The scale of the offending and grotesque nature of the images warranted a sentencing starting point close to the 14 year maximum.
Defence lawyer Gretel Fairbrother said Sarratt’s family were bewildered the man they knew had been involved.
The judge said the website had thousands of members and 85,000 “pseudo” images that were realistic depictions.
Sarratt was one of the few administrators of the site.
The images depicted children aged three to 13 years. The most serious of them were of the grossest type, and it was hard to imagine how they could have been worse, the judge said.
He inferred in some cases it would be the catalyst for people wanting to see images of real children being harmed.
Sarratt said he thought providing pseudo images would help people not to offend in person, the judge said. It was a genuine but misguided decision that required more than a mere statement to have weight on sentencing, he said.
After the sentencing, police said although the website dealt in pseudo images an examination of Sarratt’s computers also found images of real children.
And of the 85,000 images on the website, 30,000 were realistic images depicting the graphic sexual abuse and torture of children as young as infants.
United States Department of Homeland Security Investigations and Department of Justice Child Exploitation Unit referred the case to the Police Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand (OCEANZ) team.
Homeland Security Investigations Dallas Special Agent in charge Travis Pickard said the joint investigation uncovered many images featuring disturbingly realistic computer-generated representations of unspeakable child sexual abuse.
Detective Sergeant Daniel Wright led the OCEANZ part of the investigation and said creating, possessing, or distributing material promoted or tended to promote or support the sexual exploitation of children.