A Berkeley father has admitted to downloading hundreds of thousands of child abuse images and videos from the Dark Web after his wife uncovered his deviance stored on his computer.
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Romen Vargas pleaded guilty to seven charges of possessing child abuse material in Wollongong Local Court this week.
For the first time, the extent of his depravity was revealed.
Agreed facts tendered to court said Vargas, who worked at an electronics store, was arrested and charged in August last year after his wife was using his computer to retrieve her own files on June 16 when she came across a large number of deleted images of young girls.
She followed the file path and soon discovered thousands of images of young girls sorted into files under names.
Vargas' wife also found photos taken of young girls in public including at a pediatrician's office.
She kept digging on his computer and was able to find the most or recently accessed files which led her to a folder called "more pron" where images of young girls ranging in age from six to seven years were in their underwear posed in sexually explicit ways.
A few days later, Vargas' wife told a medical professional about what she had uncovered before a mandatory report was filed and she contacted police.
On June 23, police executed a search warrant at the family home where Vargas' wife showed officers the computer.
An examination of the computer revealed Vargas had more than 200,000 files, located in a single folder, of child pornography which depicted pre-pubescent girls in various states of dress and undress in sexually explicit and provocative positions.
The device contained more than 5000 videos with at least 2000 of them of real pre-pubescent girls involved in sexual acts.
Police analysed a hard drive seized from Vargas' desk draw which contained almost 800,000 images. Not all were examined but officers estimate thousands of pictures were child abuse material.
More than 200,000 images were found on Vargas' Samsung tablet which was found in his bedside table, with police again estimating thousands were child pornography with the device also having videos that depicted children as young as seven in sexual acts with adults.
Alarmingly, police found a 170-page PDF document on a USB titled "how to practice child love" which provided a step-by-step guide for adults to engage and practice sexual relationships with children.
The documents recommends having sex with children as young as two, advice on how to find a child, establishing secrecy and DNA evidence.
The device contained 42,500 images with all expect for about 200 were considered child abuse material as well as 700 pornographic videos.
Police returned to the family home on August 4 where they seized CDs and DVDs with more child abuse images uncovered, with one dating back to 1999 as well as text files which had stories about having sex with children.
Vargas was interviewed by police following his arrest in August where he admitted to downloading a substantial amount of child pornography using the Dark Web at the end of 2019 or early 2020.
He told police instead of downloading one, he saved a "whole bunch" to look at later.
Vargas said to investigators he did not know why he kept it but had plenty of space in the hard drive and would delete it later before confessing to looking at the material.
Vargas described himself to police as someone who was curious and attracted to females from 13 to 70 years of age.
Vargas will be sentenced in Wollongong District Court at a later date.
Read more court-crime stories here.
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