Geoffrey Appleby jailed over 'truly appalling' child abuse material, which included exploited babies

Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson sentenced Geoffrey Robert Appleby on Friday afternoon to two years and nine months in jail.

The ACT Supreme Court judge ordered that the Higgins man be released from custody and placed under supervision once he has served 18 months of that period behind bars.

Appleby's sentence was backdated to the day he was arrested during a police raid on his home in August last year, meaning he will leave the Alexander Maconochie Centre in February 2022.

The 45-year-old previously pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing or controlling child abuse material, one count of accessing such material, and 15 counts of capturing indecent visual data in an invasion of privacy.

On Friday, Justice Loukas-Karlsson said Appleby had downloaded 2880 videos and 651 pictures, most of which were deemed to be child abuse material, from the internet in 2019.

When police later searched the man's home, they found that material and a further objectionable 650 files stored across his laptop and mobile phone.

Investigators also located a number of hidden camera videos and images depicting women using bathrooms.

Justice Loukas-Karlsson said Appleby had admitted getting and installing the cameras "to obtain material for his own sexual gratification".

She said he had denied finding what he had captured from the bathrooms arousing and claimed to have "lost interest", but he had not uninstalled the cameras.

Turning to the child abuse material, Justice Loukas-Karlsson said Appleby had rejected suggestions he was sexually attracted to children and described downloading it as "part of some fantasy role play".

She also said he had called the material "abstract" and engaged in some "minimisation", displaying "limited victim empathy" and saying he believed he had done less harm than a contact sex offender.

But the judge said reports before the court contained "inconsistent" assessments of Appleby's remorse, with some indications he "felt bad" for the children and acknowledged that his downloading of the material fuelled a market for it.

Justice Loukas-Karlsson said there were "likely to be no less than 600 children" being exploited in the material Appleby had, with the victims ranging in age from two months to 15 years.

"Children are sexually abused to supply the market for this depraved material," she said.

"Child pornography is a depraved black hole of the internet. It is destructive of young lives."

The judge ultimately found it would be inappropriate to allow Appleby to serve his jail sentence by way of an intensive correction order in the community.

"The offending is truly appalling," she told the man.

Justice Loukas-Karlsson acknowledged that Appleby had started the process of rehabilitating himself while on remand, and urged him to continue for his own sake and that of the community.

The court heard Appleby had all but given up on returning to computer programming upon his release because the nature of his crimes would likely prevent him receiving the required security clearances.

Appleby was also ordered to forfeit the laptop and mobile phone that contained the offending material to the Commonwealth.

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