Don't Modify Those Bart & Lisa Simpson Cartoons!

Child abuse cartoon collector sentenced

BY JENNA HAND, COURT REPORTER

03 Feb, 2010 08:14 AM

A Macgregor man who collected cartoons of children being sexually abused has been sentenced in the ACT Magistrates Court to a year of weekend jail.

Downloading cartoons was William Paul Bellew's hobby and he had as many as 10,000 on his computer, 127 of which were the subject of charges.

Last week, the 54-year-old told Magistrate Grant Lalor that he did not know the child abuse pictures were illegal.

''It never crossed my mind that they were pornographic, because they were cartoons,'' the accused said.

During a search on his house last March, Bellew told investigators he did not keep child pornography and was not a paedophile but said that the material police were looking for was on his computer.

Last week, the court heard he used to tinker with the cartoons and turn them into likenesses of characters from The Simpsons.

''I used to edit them because I liked to use Adobe Photoshop,'' he said.

Mr Lalor said he found it hard to believe Bellew, a father of three, did not consider the ''vivid, degrading and disgraceful'' images child pornography.