A Balclutha man who shared child abuse images on a cellphone messaging app says he did so because of ''boredom and loneliness''.
The 22-year-old, whose name was permanently suppressed, appeared before the Dunedin District Court yesterday having pleaded guilty to four counts of distributing objectionable publications.
The defendant used the app ''KIK'' under the usernames ''horny'' and ''sheepy'' to send depraved photos of girls as young as 3 to other users.
He admitted sharing four images between July and August last year.
But when he was caught by police five months ago, he made a surprising disclosure.
The man said he had ''shared and traded, in his own estimation, hundreds of images involving explicit child pornography over previous months using mobile data which could not be traced back to him''.
Judge John Macdonald said, while he was able to take that into account, he could only sentence on the four specific instances.
Most of the abuse depicted in the images the defendant shared is too explicit to be described.
Defence counsel Brian Kilkelly stressed his client's IQ was in the ''borderline range'', significantly below that of a typical adolescent.
As a result, it had been suggested the man had limited insight.
''The defendant has displayed an apparent lack of appreciation of the deviancy of his behaviour,'' Probation assessed.
Mr Kilkelly said spending the last three months behind bars awaiting sentencing had certainly driven home the significance of his actions.
''The offending began to relieve boredom and loneliness following the break-up of a two-year relationship,'' he said.
''He has been able to function in the community and in terms of work but when it comes to his everyday life he's been operating in a relatively limited way.''
Judge Macdonald accepted the man had been living a ''perhaps sad life''.
The judge said it was unclear how many people had seen the objectionable images as a result of the defendant's actions but the harm to the victims was clear.
The man was jailed for 18 months and was given leave to apply for home detention should an appropriate address become available.
He was granted name suppression because of his cognitive challenges and to protect his family.
