A former Melbourne aged-care nurse barred from re-registering after being caught with 46,000 child porn images and videos says he has “never done anything bad to anyone”. Police were called when two computers James Hutchinson pawned at a Frankston Cash Converters were not redeemed. Staff began to prepare the computers for sale and found none of the contents had been deleted, including Hutchinson’s child porn stash. While he was charged in September 2014, he wasn’t convicted until late 2016 because of the time it took police to trawl through and categorise the 46,000 files on various devices. The images and videos were downloaded between January 2012 and July 2014, while Hutchinson was working as a nurse in an aged care ward of a public hospital. He failed to let the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia know about the charges. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruled this month that because of the conviction, Hutchinson was disqualified from applying to be a registered nurse for six years. VCAT members Elisabeth Wentworth, Mary Archibald and Marietta Bylhouwer said in their written decision Hutchinson should serve a longer disqualification because of the sheer volume of images and their categories. “Hutchinson has not demonstrated an understanding of the reason why possessing child pornography is treated as such a serious offence,” they wrote. “It is, frankly, abhorrent that a member of the nursing profession would commit an offence that by its nature implicitly involves the exploitation of vulnerable children.” In emailed submissions to the tribunal, Hutchinson said the banning orders were appropriate but also lashed out at his punishment. “I lost my wife, the house that we owned, my career and my income,” the 53-year-old wrote. “I will die in poverty with no children, having achieved nothing, as I am very effectively blocked of out many things. “I understand that my behaviour was bad, but find that the consequences brought about by others are very destructive to me. “I have never done anything bad to anyone, but I’m blocked from life as though I am a threat to children and everyone else.” Hutchinson also tried and failed, to have the nursing matters suppressed from publication because of “dangers” to his wellbeing. Hutchinson was put on a community corrections order after appealing his criminal sentence in the County Court in May 2017 and will be a registered sex offender until September 2024.
