GUILTY: Oxford Brookes employee caught with indecent images


GUILTY: Oxford Brookes employee caught with indecent images

A former Oxford Brookes employee who denied making indecent images of children has been convicted.

Michael Smith was working for the university’s IT team when police raided his All Saints Road house on the morning of August 30, 2016.
Despite the 54-year old refusing to give any comment to police at interview analysts later found a suspected stash of banned pictures on two of his devices.

Smith, who now lives in Winforton, Hereford, was caught with 60 images on one machine and 23 photographs of children on another, but went on to deny two counts of making indecent images on or before August 29, 2016.

As his trial at Oxford Crown Court came to an end today jurors took just two hours and 43 minutes to find him guilty on both counts with a unanimous verdict.

Smith showed no emotion and stared straight ahead as the verdicts were given.

After he had been found guilty his defence barrister Lucy Tapper asked that his sentencing hearing be adjourned while a pre-sentence report is prepared by the National Probation Service to explore sentencing options.

Presiding Judge Zoe Smith agreed to postpone the matter and she thanked the jury panel for their assistance in the case before they were released.

The trial began at the same court last week.

Jurors were told how, after police analysed the machines and found what they believed to be evidence of accessing indecent images, Smith was interviewed a second time.

During that interview, prosecutors said, Smith accepted accessing pornography but said that any child images found on his computers were there by mistake.

Jurors were told that in his prepared statement to police Smith said: “I accept that I have come into contact with child pornography through my internet use.

“However this was entirely accidental and caused me to delete the material as soon as I became aware of its existence.”

Smith stuck to this account when he took to the witness box during the trial and told the court that although he was ‘obsessed’ with pornography he had no sexual interest in children.

He went on to say that he had never knowingly downloaded an indecent image of a child but accepted using search terms for legal pornography including ‘Lolita’.

Speaking to police of the use of that term, the court heard, he said: “I don’t accept that this automatically equates to searching for child pornography.”

He will now be sentenced at the same court on Friday, March 22, and was released on bail until then.