1 NEWS can now reveal the breadth of offending by disgraced businessman Ron Brierley following the release of the statement of facts today.
The 83-year-old had pleaded guilty to three charges of possessing child abuse material, after he was arrested in Sydney Airport in 2019, due to fly to Fiji.
Border Force staff and police officers searched his bag, finding a USB containing material that amounted to child abuse material.
The device had thousands of images on it, but it was nothing compared to what they’d discover in the coming hours.
Brierley was immediately arrested, with officers grilling him about the images in his possession.
He told them, ”I reckon they’re all, they’re perfectly OK”.
He said he’d downloaded them from the internet, and said they were from a subscription service.
Brierley was also asked about the age of the girls in the images, and he said the youngest was “probably” about 8, and the oldest “19 or 20”.
When asked if they were for a sexual purpose, Brierley replied “no”, and told officers that he’d downloaded the images because they’d “looked interesting”.
Officers also asked if any of the images in his possession were naked or “sexually suggestive”, to which he said none.
He then added, “depends what you mean by sexually suggestive”.
There were also written stories recovered from the same USB, detailing the rape of children.
One described the sexual assault of a 9-year-old girl.
Brierley admitted to reading the stories.
Later that day, police executed a search warrant at his home in the affluent suburb of Point Piper in Sydney.
Officers found further child abuse material on several other electronic devices throughout the home, containing thousands more images.
It’s not known when Brierley downloaded the content from the internet, and how long it had been in his possession.
Some material has been duplicated, and the extent of this is not known either.
In total, Brierley was in possession of 46,794 ‘category two’ images. Police classify this as amounting to ‘child abuse material’, with images of female children in various states of dress or undress, that is in clothing, swimwear or underwear, in sexualised poses.
Among the files was a video, which ran for almost 2 hours, and focused on the breasts and genital areas of six young female children.
Brierley was also in possession of one image in ‘category one’, which depicted a naked child with her genitals exposed.
Ron Brierley handed back his knighthood earlier this year.
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