A man who admitted accessing more than 23,000 items of child pornography will be sentenced in the Supreme Court this morning.

Li-Shan Wong, 43, was scheduled to be sentenced yesterday, but his case was adjourned after his defence counsel asked for a six-month conditional discharge – which was contested by the prosecution.

Wong pleaded guilty last Thursday to three counts of accessing child pornography, which included images, videos and written material.

He was arrested two years ago after police carried out a search of his Hamilton Parish home after they got information that "indecent“ content was being accessed online at the address.

An analysis of the electronic equipment seized from his home revealed 20,017 photographs and ten videos of children, as well as 3,477 short stories that referenced sexual abuse of children.

The material was thought to have been collected as far back as February 2014 and the majority of it was classed as Level 1 in the UK sentencing guidelines – the lowest of five levels.

The case was adjourned from last Friday to allow the prosecution and defence more time to decide what length of jail term to ask for.

Susan Mulligan, for the defence, told the court yesterday that her client was driven to search for the obscene material because of psychological problems.

She said that Wong had struggled to fit in when he moved to Bermuda in 2014 and had been separated from his family for almost ten years.

Ms Mulligan added that social isolation, along with frequent time on the internet, led him to the sites where he found the illegal material.

She told Puisne Judge Craig Attridge that there had been similar cases in the British and Canadian courts where people had searched for obscene material as a result of social isolation.

She claimed that some cases had resulted in a conditional discharge if the defendant had a history of good character.

But Cindy Clarke, the Director of Public Prosecutions, insisted that Wong receive a sentence between a year and 18 months in prison to protect the public.

She added: “There is no example provided by my friend in the UK sentencing guidelines that suggests that a discharge of any type is appropriate for offences of this nature.”

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