Pervert downloaded ‘dreadful sexual abuse’ images involving young children
A pervert who downloaded ‘dreadful sexual abuse’ images of young children has avoided jail.
Police raided Samuel Williams’ home in Haslingden and seized a laptop and USB stick containing 87 category A images – the most serious – 59 category B and 120 category C images.
Williams told police that he started using cocaine after his brother died and was sent the images over internet chat sites.
The 23-year-old pleaded guilty at Burnley Crown Court to three counts of making indecent images of children and one count of distributing a category B image of a child.
He was given a three-year community order with a sex offender treatment programme and a 20-day rehabilitation activity requirement and ordered to pay £800 costs. He was also given a five-year sexual harm prevention order and ordered to sign the sex offenders register for five years.
Prosecutor Lisa Worsley said the warrant was executed on Bury Road in Haslingden on August 18 last year.
The court heard how Williams ‘immediately’ said he had shared an image of a child over the internet and ‘used it for watching pornography’.
However he denied saving the indecent images on his computer and said he had deleted them.
Miss Worsley said during the defendant’s police interview he said he would go on chat sites while under the influence of cocaine and would ask for pictures of girls ‘around 18 years old’.
Williams told officers that he would ‘occasionally get a picture of a person who was too young and he would stop the chat’.
The court was told that a search of Williams’ laptop revealed ‘pertinent search terms’ and that he was ‘deliberately looking for illegal images of children’.
Sentencing, Judge Jonathan Gibson said: “These images depict dreadful sexual abuse of children.”