A convicted Satanist has been jailed for six years after being convicted of sending indecent images of children to a friend and having them send them to a man he met online.
John Henshaw was sentenced to a year in jail for one count of sending the child porn to his friend, who pleaded guilty to possessing it.
Sentencing Judge Mark Jorgensen said the offences were part of a long-running pattern of offending, which included a child porn website, an internet forum and the downloading of child abuse images.
“You have been a serial offender and a repeat offender, it is a pattern that goes on,” he said.
“This is not the first time you have been caught but this is the first you have had to go to jail.”
Henshaw, 59, of Eastwood, Melbourne, pleaded guilty last year to possessing child abuse material and was also charged with possessing child pornography.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, the victim said he had been in a relationship with Hensham for nearly a decade, but that the relationship had soured after Henshaw sent explicit images to her.
He said she felt “shamed” and “traumatised” and that she felt abandoned.
“She said she was being left behind by a man she trusted and had to move on with her life,” Judge Jorgenson said.
“She was a victim of a criminal network.”
He said Hensaw had a “toxic” and unstable personality, with violent outbursts and mental health problems.
He also sentenced Henshawn to six years’ jail for possessing child exploitation material and to serve a year’s supervised release.
Judge Jorgensen said Henham’s “perpetrator” had also made “serious threats” to the victim, who is also a victim victim of child exploitation.
He told Henshews behaviour would be a concern for his victim, and he would take into account the impact of his offending on the victim.
“The offender will have an impact on your child,” Judge Dutton said.
He imposed a restraining order preventing Henshi from contacting the victim or the victim’s children.
