Jamie Lee Byfield: Jail for man who possessed, bought, created and distributed child exploitation material

A Kalgoorlie-Boulder grandfather has been sentenced to six years imprisonment after admitting to possessing, buying, creating and distributing nearly 500 images and videos of child exploitation material, including material of a child less than one-year-old. Jamie Lee Byfield, 52, fronted Kalgoorlie District Court in custody on Wednesday to be sentenced for six convicted charges including two counts of intending to procure a person believed to be under 13 years for sexual activity and one count of using an electronic communication with intent to procure a person under the age of 16 years to engage in sexual activity. Byfield also faced two counts of distributing child exploitation material and one count of possessing CEM. State prosecutor Lily Knuckey told the court that on July 15, 2024, police officers attended Byfield’s home in Boulder to conduct a drug-related search and seized the man’s phone and an SD card. She said upon investigating the devices, police found 15 videos and 400 images of CEM of children aged under 13-years — the majority featuring girls aged between five and 10 — and two videos and 82 images of CEM of children aged under 16. Ms Knuckey said police had also found several online conversations between Byfield and people he believed to be young girls across four months on the online platforms Telegram, Tiktok, and Facebook messenger. She said on February 4 the man had messaged a user on Tiktok and asked them how old they were. When they responded “14”, Byfield claimed he was 22 and made sexually explicit comments. The court was told Byfield had also exchanged ongoing messages with a Facebook user the prosecution believed to be a female aged between 10-13 years who had sent him several images of girls under 10 years after he had requested “raunchy” material and sent the account two images of other young girls in the hopes of receiving “similar” pictures. The 52-year-old had also had ongoing conversations with another user believed to be a young girl aged between 12 and 15 who lived in Ukraine. The court was told Byfield had sent the user two $50 Apple gift cards on separate occasions in exchange for nude images and sexual videos and had even suggested they engage in sexually explicit activity. It was also believed Byfield had “aspirations” to meet the user as Ms Knuckey said he had asked them how much flights were to get to Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Ms Knuckey said shortly after Byfield’s home was initially searched, he had returned home and bought a new phone, which he tried to destroy when police turned up at his door eight days later to conduct another search. Police had found more CEM material and message exchanges on Byfield’s new phone including a message to one of the users with who Byfield had previously talked. Judge Beryl Black said the incident proved that the man had demonstrated “no evidence” of remorse and therefore had a “high risk of reoffending”. Byfield’s lawyer Ken Robson said there were “two sides to every story” and told the court his client, who had a long career in concreting, had been going through a tough time at home, having lost contact with his children and grandchildren, abusing substances and having lost many of his friends. The court heard the 52-year-old had not engaged in rehabilitation programs since being taken into custody but had taken up work in prison doing cleaning. Mr Robson said Byfield felt a sense of embarrassment about his case’s information potentially being spread and wanted to get his life back on track. “Your client is not remorseful,” said Judge Black before mentioning the severity of Byfield not only possessing and creating the material but also distributing it. “CEM is a permanent record of that child,” she said. “They could never remove it or get rid of it.” Judge Black said there was no evidence that the victims were indeed children, but it was clear the man had a sexual interest in young girls and believed the users he was speaking to were underage. She told Byfield that he contributed to “stealing their innocence” and did not doubt the man had caused physical and mental harm to the users he had interacted with, who were unable to defend themselves. Judge Black also said it was “probably a good thing” Byfield had limited access to communicating with his own children. To “protect” children, Judge Black sentenced Byfield to 72 months imprisonment, backdated to July 23, 2024, and granted him eligibility for parole after four years of imprisonment.