David Paul Sawtell (32) pleaded guilty to three representative charges of possessing objectionable publications which constituted more than 1000 illegal files; some he lured people into sending as he posed online as a 13-year-old.
Nearly a quarter of them fell into the most serious category of material, featuring penetrative acts, animals and/or sadism, the Dunedin District Court heard yesterday.
The defendant had been looking at child pornography for a decade, he admitted, and his consumption had increased when he joined a file-sharing website four years ago, on which he traded the videos and images with others.
During that entire period, Sawtell had been a Dunedin Scout leader.
They were rocked when he came clean about the police investigation into his online activity and his membership was immediately terminated.
Regional development manager Chris Wilson said there had never been an issue concerning Sawtell's behaviour during his long involvement with the movement.
''No complaints, no concerns ... absolutely nothing,'' he said.
''As an organisation we were shocked and disappointed to learn that a person with such a positive standing had been offending in such a manner. Our thoughts are with the many parents and volunteer leaders who trusted and worked closely with the person concerned and have now suffered a massive breach of trust,'' he said.
Mr Wilson said a senior volunteer at Scouts had spoken to Sawtell, who stressed none of the children had been physically harmed.
The Otago Daily Times asked whether police had questioned any children under the defendant's supervision or their parents but Detective Senior Sergeant Kallum Croudis said he was ''not in a position to comment'' yesterday.
An investigation by Canadian authorities into an anonymous messaging app uncovered Sawtell's crimes.
A profile traced back to him - ''waterbaby1986'' - was found to be trading lewd images with another user.
From there, New Zealand police executed a search warrant at the man's Mosgiel home.
After seizing and analysing Sawtell's cellphone they found he had pretended to be a 13-year-old to entice other app users to send images of themselves.
But the true depth of his offending lay in a cloud-based account bearing 5420 files.
Police took a random sample of 3626 and more than 1100 were discovered to be illegal.
Before Judge Michael Turner outlined the case in court yesterday, he warned the public there that details would be ''disturbing''.
Some videos involved children as young as 2, others showed pre-teens being violated by adults and performing sex acts on animals.
''Unusually'', the judge said, one of the overseas victims, now aged 19, had been located and provided a statement.
''She regards she is being raped by each and every person who views the material,'' he said.
The United Nations estimated she was just one of up to 100,000 victims of child sexual exploitation.
Though Sawtell was assessed as ''lacking empathy'' by Probation, his parents told the ODT he was desperate to address his addiction.
They said they had gone looking for help as soon as they found out about his offending but had found nothing.
They never considered their son was capable of such depravity.
''It was a total shock,'' Mrs Sawtell said.
''The David we know is someone very community-orientated, who's given back to the activities he's been involved with ... Nothing's too much trouble for Dave. He'll drop everything to go and help somebody.''
Sawtell, they said, had been involved with Scouts since he was 6 and they hoped his convictions did not bring the organisation into disrepute.
He was jailed or two years and three months.
