A Sydney childcare worker has been charged with seven counts of using a child to make abusive material after federal police allegedly found more than 500,000 unique images on his devices.
The man, who can’t be named due to a suppression order, had worked at a number of childcare centres in the city. He’d worked in the sector for over a decade.
The Australian federal police (AFP) charged the man in July after executing a search warrant at his home a month earlier, when they seized several of his electronic devices.
The devices contained about 1.4m electronic files, and of these, about 550,000 were unique images, police said on Thursday.
Federal police Det Supt Luke Needham said police were still reviewing the evidence and identifying the man’s alleged victims.
“The number of files does not provide any indication of the scale of the alleged offending, rather, this indicates the volume of work required by investigators from the AFP’s victim identification team,” he said.
“The team continues to methodically review the electronic material. The AFP is committed to dedicating resources to protect our children.”
The man has been charged with seven counts of using a child under 14 years to make child abuse material, three of which have been classed as aggravated. He also faces one count of possessing child abuse material on a data-use carriage service.
The alleged perpetrator was due to appear at Paramatta local court on Friday.
