The Queensland Court of Appeal has refused an application for admission to a would-be solicitor who was convicted five years ago of possessing child exploitation material, after the state’s Legal Practitioners Admissions Board deemed the applicant not to be, at this point in time, a fit and proper person for admission.
Now 30, the applicant said in an affidavit filed in February of this year that the convictions followed “years of suffering from a pornography addiction as an unhealthy way to relieve stress”, and that that addiction “led me to seeking out new and more disturbing pornography to satisfy my growing intolerance for normal pornography and a near constant need to masturbate and to watch pornography”.
In their judgment, Chief Justice Helen Bowskill, Justice David Boddice and Justice Declan Kelly determined that the applicant’s offending was “not fleeting” and that he did not “stumble” upon the offending images.
“His conduct persisted over a three-and-a-half-year period, from age 20 to 24, during which he not only actively accessed the images and videos, but stored them on various devices. The number of images was substantial, and said to involve many in the most serious of categories,” the justices espoused.
Moreover, they went on, the act of secretly filming his housemate while she was in the shower “calls into question the applicant’s fitness and propriety for admission to the legal profession, a hallmark of which is the ability of the judiciary and the public to have trust and confidence in its members”.
The justices refused the application for admission, reflecting that the board’s originating recommendation was “an entirely sensible and reasonable one”.
Source: Aspiring lawyer with child exploitation convictions refused admission – Lawyers Weekly