Ex-Cop Says Porn Images 'An Artist Thing'

By Lauren Farrow
9 News
August 28, 2012

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8523665/ex-cop-says-porn-images-an-artist-thing

A former NSW police officer and church youth worker told detectives that turning photographs of underage girls into pornographic images was "an artist thing", a Sydney court has been told.

Wayne Paul Mason, 42, allegedly kissed a 15-year-old girl during a church sleepover and groomed a 13-year-old for sex while he headed a youth group at a Sydney Baptist church, his trial has heard.

Mason has pleaded not guilty to 37 counts of sexually assaulting four girls between 1996 and 2005 and 14 counts of producing and disseminating child pornography.

In a recording of a police interview shown at his trial on Tuesday, Mason is shown a series of photographs, of which he said some had the "real" faces of underage girls, but "fake" bodies.

In the August 2010 interview, Mason denied getting sexual gratification out of looking at one of the alleged pornographic images that he doctored of an underage girl.

"Do you know what it was more so?" Mason asks the officers.

"(It is) the ability to be able to manipulate the pictures and make them seem real.

"I sort of enjoy that they (people seeing the images) think it's real.

"I know it sounds weird, but maybe it's an artist thing."

He later added: "Fake is what it's about for me."

Allegations leading to the trial against Mason did not surface with police until August 2010, when one of his alleged victims - then aged about 23 - was "googling" her name on the internet and came across "sexually explicit" photoshopped photographs of herself and other teenage girls.

It was this discovery, the court has previously heard, that prompted the police investigation.

The trial before Judge David Frearson continues.