Pervert had vile indecent images of children
A user of the online photo library service Flickr has been sent on a sex offenders’ course after he used it to store ’appalling and disgusting’ images of child abuse.
Paul Bater was tracked down after the police’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command were tipped off about the images, including one which showed a six-month-old baby being raped.
He set up his Flickr account in the name kinkyfun and claimed that his phone had uploaded the images without him knowing after he had been sent them unsolicited by another man.
There were a total of 48 photos on his iPhone and SD card of which four were in the worst category A, showing children aged six months to 12 suffering severe sexual abuse by adults.
Bater, aged 35, of Mount Pleasant Road, Newton Abbot, admitted three counts of making indecent images of children and was sent on a sex offenders’ treatment course as part of a three year community order.
He was put on the sex offenders register and made subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, which restricts his future use of the internet, by Judge Timothy Rose at Exeter Crown Court.
He told him: ‘There was an image of sexual activity with a baby of six months old. You know, I know, and all right thinking people know this was an appalling and disgusting image in which the abuse was particularly severe.
‘People who view this sort of material help to perpetuate the abuse of children, and that is why it is serious.’
Mr James Taghdissian, prosecuting, said the CEOP unit were alerted to the images on Flickr and police raided Bater’s home, where they found the images on a phone and an SD card.
He said: ‘There was one image of an extremely vulnerable baby of about six months. There were very explicit images involving very, very young children being hurt in the way depicted.’
Bater told police the images had been sent to him on Whatsapp by someone who he had contacted through a swingers website and although he was not interested and tried to delete them, his phone synched them to his Flickr account.