Geraldton father and son Mark Wayne Wilson and Raymond Douglas Wilson share jail cell after pleading guilty to child porn images

A father and son who lived together in Geraldton now share a jail cell after both pleaded guilty to possession of vile and extremely graphic child porn images. Raymond Douglas Wilson, 30, and his father, 52-year-old Mark Wayne Wilson were each charged with one count of possessing child exploitation material after police seized mobile phones from their home in January. Both men pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, with Judge Amanda Burrows sentencing Raymond Wilson to 22 months in jail when he appeared in the Perth District Court on Wednesday. His sentencing followed that of his father by the same judge in July this year. He was given a 12-month jail term. Sentencing the son, Judge Burrows noted he had been in possession of 57 graphic photos and two videos ranging in severity from the lowest rating of depravity all the way through to the highest — category 6 — with the images including that of infants and pre-teens being abused sexually with many references to incest among them. “I consider (the images) to be of a particularly graphic nature and they involved some very young children and very, very distressing content and very distressing conduct being perpetrated upon those very real victims,” Judge Burrows said. The father had just 52 images found on mobile phones belonging to him, but the highest severity rating was a category 4. The raid on their home was prompted by a notification from Google to police earlier that month advising child exploitation material had been found on an email account used by Mark Wilson. He claimed his son had set up the account for him. Judge Burrows said there was no suggestion the men were exchanging the images between them. However, both men admitted to methamphetamine use, which pre-sentencing reports noted could increase their libidos, and while being interviewed by police after the raid on his home, Mark Wilson admitted having “general conversation” about child exploitation material with his son. In addition, the father had admitted “a sexual interest in children” both male and female. He had also been downloading graphic images for between two and three years with the behaviour “not a one-off aberration”, according to Judge Burrows. In a pre-sentence report, the son — brought up since the age of five by his father with the help of his grandmother after his mother abdicated responsibility for him — was described as socially withdrawn. Representing Raymond Wilson, Renee Ellis said: “He considers his best friend his father and refers to him as his soulmate.” At the time of their arrest, Raymond Wilson had been his father’s full-time paid carer for three years, with Mark Wilson having been on a disability pension for five years because of a “genetic issue” relating to his back. A first time offender, Judge Burrows said mitigating factors in Raymond Wilson’s case included co-operation with police and his early guilty plea, and lack of a criminal record. His father had a criminal record, but the record, which involved offences in the 1980s, had “no offending of a sexual nature and no offending involving child exploitation material”. In her sentencing remarks for Mark Wilson, Judge Burrows said: “It is probably that residing with your son who’s also been accessing such material would have helped you to justify such behaviour to yourself.” The pair now share a cell at Albany Regional Prison and both were made eligible for parole.