Former Pitcairn Island mayor Michael Warren has been found guilty of possessing child sex photos and videos.
Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Michael Warren faced 20 charges of possessing the explicit child sex material and was on trial on Pitcairn Island, with a video-link to the British High Commission in Auckland.
The Crown had said Warren had no legitimate reasons for downloading hours of child sex videos to his computer and hard drives.
Today Crown prosecutor Kieran Raftery said Mr Warren's defence was that he accidentally downloaded the material when using a peer to peer file sharing site. But Mr Raftery said of the 179 files, 149 of them were sexual photos of children.
Mr Warren's lawyer Tony Ellis had previously told the court his client wanted to know more about child abuse in light of the historic Pitcairn sex trials, and that he was alarmed by the amount of child sex content online.
But Mr Raftery said in reality Mr Warren was acting on his own sexual gratification and took part in online sex chats with young people.