Kempton Cowan, the former chief executive of Joondalup Health Campus for 18 years, was sentenced in Perth’s District Court this week to 23 months for 11 offences relating to child pornography.
He will serve five months in jail, with the remaining 18 served out in the community.
The charges included seven counts of causing child abuse material to be transmitted using a carriage service, one count of soliciting child abuse material using a carriage service and three counts of possessing child abuse material obtained or accessed using a carriage service – as categorised by Interpol and the Australian Federal Police.
In her remarks, Judge Vernon noted that the material in counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 were descriptions in the form of text or written chats of a child under the age of 18 engaging in sexual activity.
“In my view, these are towards the lowest end of the range for this offence, there’s no evidence you believed the people you were dealing with were children. The material in the brief indicates the events they were describing had occurred sufficiently long enough that they were now at least 18 years of age, that is, adults,” she said.
“They were, however, talking about a sexual experience they professed to have as a child and the seriousness of this type of material… is because it normalises child sexual abuse.
“The descriptions are short, and apart from the age of the people said to be involved at the time of the description, the stories are not particularly detailed, nor do they have a high degree of depravity… the sexual experiences depicted were all consensual.”
However, the offending in counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 was aggravated by Cowan paying money for the child abuse material, thereby providing an incentive to produce it, with count 8 considered more serious, and the maximum possible penalty for these offences was 15 years’ imprisonment.
In relation to count 8, Judge Vernon explained that Cowan’s offending was also aggravated by the fact that he was aware that the person he had requested the material from was only a child.
“It is not in dispute that you understood the person sending the material was a 14-year-old schoolboy. I am told that initially you were under the impression that this person, who called himself Purge, was a female over the age of 18, until it was later revealed to you that he was a male aged 14,” she said.
“However, your discovery of his age did not dissuade you from obtaining material from him… You were paying for material that was produced by people who were abusing real children, thereby providing a commercial market for that material and an incentive to abusers to continue to produce it.
“The children are re-victimised because the images remain online indefinitely and are looked at by people such as yourself.”
Judge Vernon said Cowan’s offending had escalated over two years, during which he was drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, and only came to an end because of his arrest.
“I’m told by way of an explanation rather than an excuse that during the period of the offending you were under a great deal of stress at work and also drinking a lot of alcohol as a result of your attending numerous after-work functions each week,” she said.
“Overall, therefore you engaged in sporadic offending encompassing a period of more than two years which escalated from lawfully communications of a sexual nature with others to obtaining unlawful communications in the form of stories, soliciting material and then a further escalation to obtaining images and videos of real children being sexually abused for some time during that period.
“It is difficult to accept that a man who is described in the references I have received to be highly intelligent did not fully appreciate the seriousness of the offending or understand that what you were doing had consequences for real children.”
The references provided spoke of the respect which Cowan formerly held in his professional and personal capacity, noting his charitable work raising significant amounts of money for charity including participating in the CEO Sleep out.
“It is clear that before these charges you were held in high regard in the community and that you continue to have the support of the many people who have written references for you who believe you are remorseful and that these offences are out of character and who continue to have faith in you,” Judge Vernon said.
Cowan has undergone 20 individual sessions with a psychologist as well as a 19-week child sex offender treatment program amounting to 38 hours in a group session, and the psychological assessment determined that he did not present as someone with a sexually deviant preoccupation towards children – mitigating the risk of any further offences.
“You are highly remorseful, aware of the wrongfulness of your behaviour, have endeavoured to address it by the counselling you have undergone… and have devised a safety or prevention plan to ensure no relapse into similar offending in the future,” Judge Vernon said.
“In my view, those circumstances coupled with your other mitigating factors do justify my moderating to some extent the length of the period that I order you to serve in custody. It is my view that the minimum term that justice requires that you are to serve following which you should be released on recognisance is a term of five months’ imprisonment.”