A former Illawarra police officer has admitted to having a host of child abuse abuse material on his phone.
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Daniel Peter Houweling, a senior constable in the NSW Police Force, fronted Wollongong Local Court on Wednesday where his lawyer, Cate Doosey, formally entered guilty pleas to possessing child abuse material using carriage service and use carriage service to access child abuse material.
In agreed facts tendered to court, the 38-year-old was spoken to at Lake Illawarra Police Station on March 31, where his phone was seized.
Officers then went to his Horsley home and executed a search warrant where a number of devices were seized.
Officers from the Professional Standards Command found 237 images and seven videos that were classified as child abuse material on Houweling's phone.
Houweling, a father of two, had stored 10 of the images in a folder, titled 'documents'.
The images depicted prepubescent girls in various stages of undress, engaging in sexually explicit poses.
The remaining 227 images and seven videos existed as cache files, some of which had been accessed via Twitter.
Again, the images were of prepubescent girls in various stages of undress engaging in sexually explicit poses and the videos were animations of children engaging in sexual intercourse.
Houweling was arrested on March 31 and was charged.
The exact nature of how Houweling's abuse material came to the attention of police is not known.
Houweling will appear in Wollongong District Court on December 11 for sentencing.
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