Man who automatically downloaded child porn from a chat group has to go to prison

SINGAPORE – A man who failed to disable the auto-download feature in a WhatsApp chat group was sentenced to a month in prison on Monday (Feb 7) after he was found to be in possession of child abuse material shared by the group.

Kolambage Dhanushka Chamara Perera, a 25-year-old Sri Lankan, said he had done his best to delete the video footage involving children, but there were too many for him to keep track of.

Perera pleaded guilty to possessing 25 videos containing child abuse material, with the charge of possessing obscene videos being taken into account in his sentence.

On August 6, 2020, Perera was arrested after behaving suspiciously at Lavender subway station. Patrol officers conducted a search on him and found a debit card that did not belong to him. Perera said his roommate had lent him the card and he was able to prove it. Officers noticed that Perera's WhatsApp on his mobile phone contained a group chat that appeared to show a display picture of a couple in a sexual position.

Officers accessed the group chat and found that it included 256 participants and over 6,000 media files, some of which contained child pornography. Perera was arrested and his iPhone 7 was confiscated.

Thousands of obscene videos found

Perera was renting a house in Singapore. When his student ID was about to expire, his housing agent told him that he needed to renew his student ID or he would have to move out of the house.

Perera's friend then introduced him to his 29-year-old compatriot Hindakumbure Charindu Dilshan Rajapaksha, who had contacts with people who could take over the unit.

Dilshan had set up a WhatsApp chat group with his roommates in 2019, ostensibly to share news from their hometown. As the group administrator, he then invited other Sri Lankans to join the group and sent Perera a link sometime before August 7, 2020 so that he could join the group.

Other members of the group began sharing pornographic material and Dilshan did so as well.

After joining the group chat, Perera saw obscene videos being shared. The media files were automatically downloaded to his phone's gallery.

Although he deleted some of these videos, participants began sending more of them.

“The defendant also admitted during the investigation that he was 'not really interested' in obscene videos involving minors and had deleted them. Although he did his best to delete 'obscene videos involving minors,' he may have sometimes failed to delete them because there were 'too many such videos,'” the prosecutor said.

Since his arrest, Perera has deactivated the automatic download feature of his WhatsApp account.

Of the 3,740 videos extracted from Perera's phone, 2,968 were obscene videos, while 25 contained depictions of child abuse.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Tessa Tan is seeking a jail term of one to two months for Perera, saying that while Perera “did not actively search for child abuse material, it is a fact that he set his WhatsApp account to 'auto-download' mode, so he ended up having in his possession a large number of obscene films and up to 25 video files containing child abuse material.”

She pointed out that some of the videos featured pre-pubescent children and at least one video featured a baby or toddler.

Perera's lawyer R. Kalamohan stressed that the videos were not created by his client.

“These were sent to him after he was recruited for a WhatsApp group… where Sri Lankan citizens can share material about their hometown and welfare,” he said.

“That was the case initially and then this obscene material was sent to his iPhone and as you can see there is an automatic download and then it just kept coming, although as he mentioned he tried to delete some of it but after that he just left it there.”

He told District Judge Shawn Ho: “It is extremely unfortunate that this young man is involved in this group. Of course it is his fault that he did not leave the group. When it came out that he should have left the group, he did not, and therein lies his fault.”

The lawyer added that this would tarnish his client's character and asked for the minimum possible sentence of one month for Perera's offence.

Dilshan's case is still in court. He is accused of distributing 16 child abuse films and uploading 943 obscene films in the WhatsApp chat group.

Possession of or access to child pornography is punishable by imprisonment. Perera could have been sentenced to up to five years in prison and a fine or caning.

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