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Ben McCormack pleads guilty to child porn charges

Updated: Former Nine reporter pleads guilty after lawyer reaches agreement with prosecution.

Former A Current Affair reporter Ben McCormack, 43, has pleaded guilty to two child porn offences.

In Downing Centre Court lawyer Sam Macedone told Magistrate Jennifer Atkinson that his client will enter two pleas of guilty after he was able to agree on a set of facts with the prosecution.

Outside the court he told media McCormack had never traded images of children.

“Ben has always admitted to what he’s done, however the facts weren’t exactly correct,” Macedone said.

“I just wanted to make it quite clear that there was never any images that were traded between Ben and anyone else of any child exploitation material. It was nothing more than fantasy talk, but no transporting of images.

“That’s what I wanted, that’s what we’ve got, so we’re now pleading guilty and we’ll move on from that.”

The Nine reporter was suspended by the network following his arrest in April.

His next court date will be on the 6th of October where he will be sentenced for two counts of using a carriage service to transmit child pornography, punishable to a maximum penalty of 15 years.

Update: McCormack has since resigned from Nine.

Fairfax details explicit texts exchanged between McCormack and an unknown man including descriptions of what the pair would like to do to children, their preferences of children as young as three including ages and physical features, and discussion of where to access videos and photos of child pornography.

On May 12, 2015, McCormack – who used the screen name “oz4skinboi” and claimed to be 28 – said he couldn’t wait to look at “B porn”.

The man responded: “I have some vids … wbu [what about you]?”

McCormack: “Some”.

Man: “Cool cool, pics too?”

McCormack: “None saved but links.”

In an early morning chat on January 4, 2017, McCormack wrote: “I’m a total b loving pedo”.

Over the next two and a half weeks, he sent messages including “I wana get pedo with u” and “Proud ped, proud b lover.”

Police also obtained a 30-second video of McCormack performing a sex act, which he sent to the other man.

Source: Fairfax, News Corp