Timothy G. Lynch said it was curiosity that led to his downloading more than 1,000 images of child pornography in 2009.

When he was finally arrested in December 2009, court heard he told police, “I’m glad I got caught. I’m glad that chapter’s over.”

Another chapter began Thursday when the 37-year-old Regina man was handed a one-year jail sentence, the mandatory minimum for the offence to which he’d pleaded guilty – making available child pornography.

Appearing without a lawyer, Lynch told Regina Provincial Court Judge Murray Hinds he came across the pornography on the Internet and was both confused and curious. As his curiosity grew, so did his collection.

Lynch said he deleted the images after he’d looked at them and that what he was doing bothered him.

“I would stay up at night because I felt sick to my stomach,” he said in court Thursday.

Crown prosecutor Adam Breker said Lynch – who has no previous criminal record – came to police attention on Sept. 21, 2009, when the Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit identified an IP address as one that was involved in possessing and making available child pornography files through a peer-to-peer file-sharing network.

Police established a direct one-toone link with the IP address – later found to belong to Lynch – and were able to browse and download a number of files. Of 46 files that were downloaded at that time, 40 were identified as child pornography.

The investigation continued until Dec. 3, 2009, on which date a search warrant was executed at Lynch’s Regina home. Police seized a computer from his bedroom and then had to undertake the painstaking task of going through 15,000 images and 700 videos to see which, if any, contained child pornography. The forensic analysis found that Lynch’s computer contained 1,000 separate images of child porn with 39 of those in “accessible” space, rendering them viewable to anyone with access to the computer. The remainder were found in deleted, lost or recovered files. Police also found 64 videos they classified as child porn.

Breker said the images showed males and females between infancy and 12 years of age. Lynch also had what was described as a significant adult pornography collection.

Breker said that in speaking with police, Lynch appeared to indicate he felt a “real separation between what was on the screen and real life,” even though he knew it was wrong.

“Obviously the size and nature of the collection are quite disturbing,” Breker said, adding that by viewing the material Lynch was contributing to the continued existence of child porn on the Internet.

Hinds agreed, stating the reason for Parliament’s introduction of a mandatory minimum jail sentence was to express society’s “revulsion for offences of this manner.”

In addition to the jail term, Lynch is subject to a three-year probation order to include conditions limiting his access to computers, the Internet and children. He will also be placed on the sex offender registry for 20 years, must provide a sample of his DNA and is subject to separate five-year orders preventing his communicating with children on the Internet or seeking paid or volunteer work placing him in a position of trust or authority over kids.