Court

Brentwood man has been found guilty of possessing more than 4.5million indecent images of children, downloaded through a sophistocated computer set-up he calls his 'library'. How long will he serve in prison?
15 MONTHS.
Thur 5th May 2011, Mirror / Yellow Advertiser

An Essex man who downloaded almost 5million indecent images of children will be out of prison in just over a year.

In a hearing at Basildon Crown Court, Judge Jonathan Black sentenced Stephen Clark of Greeding Walk, Brentwood to 30 months in jail after hearing that he had downloaded 4.6million indecent images of children and shared them with other internet users.

However, Clark was told that he would only serve 15 months in custody and spend the rest of his sentence out on license.

At a hearing on Friday 11th March 2011, where Clark pled guilty to eight charges involving indecent images of children and one count of possessing extreme pornographic images, the haul was described as the second biggest seizure of child porn in UK history. 

Clark, 57, was arrested by Essex Police in September 2009 after a German police investigation found that his computer IP address had accessed a website containing images of child abuse.

When cops executed a search warrant on Clark’s home he told them, "I'll put my hands up. I'll come clean. I've got a problem. I collected. It doesn't hurt anyone."

Even as cops descended on the property they found that Clark had three computers simultaneously uploading and downloading indecent images of children.

Prosecutor Andrew Jackson told the court, "As police stood there, there were some 202 downloads in progress, together with a number of uploads." 

Jackson told the court that police had discovered a 'very sophisticated computer set-up' whereby a master computer and three other computers were all connected to one screen so that Clark could switch between them and monitor what was downloading on each one at any given time. 

After his arrest Clark told interviewing officers that he’d been collecting images of child abuse for 20 years as a 'hobby' but that it had 'become an obsession'.

He said, “It’s a bit like collecting cigarette cards or snuff boxes or something like that,” and added, “I call it a library.”

Clark, who worked as a self-employed computer systems analyst, told police how he’d used his IT expertise to make sure his wife and children couldn’t access the illegal images.

When asked how he felt about contributing to the abuse of children, he told police that he hadn't created any victims because the children became victims when the images were created.

Of one video he said: "I can recall one short clip when a girl was being tied up, but it was a game. She could get out of it. It wasn't serious abuse in that respect."

Police analysis of the computer found 4.6million images - so many that prosecutors said it would have been ‘practically impossible’ for police to dedicate the man hours it would take to sift through them all.

Instead, cops chose roughly 600,000 photos and videos at random and found that they included images of babies being penetrated by adult males and young children being abused by female adults.

Prosecutor Andrew Jackson said among the extreme pornographic images on his computer police found pictures of “adults indulging in intercourse with predominantly horses and dogs.”

A selection of images representative of the 600,000 analyzed by police was played to the judge and included one image where a young child was being penetrated by an adult male and 'crying and screaming at the same time'.

A defence lawyer said that Clark was ‘by nature a hoarder’ and showed the judge pictures of two piles of magazines, one in his bedroom and one in his living room, to demonstrate the ‘disorganised nature of his home’.

The lawyer added, “He is collecting this abhorrent material in much the same sense.”

Before delivering his sentence, Judge Jonathan Black told Clark, “I have today seen an assortment of these images... They show abuse of young children at the highest level.”

Speaking of his concern that Clark seemed not to understand that child pornography creates victims, he told Clark that the children in his sick collection had been caused ‘extreme pain and suffering’ and said that they will have to grow up knowing that people such as Clark ‘gain some sort of perverted enjoyment’ from watching their abuse.

However, he told Clark that his lack of previous convictions, immediate confession and early guilty pleas would all count in his favour and sentenced him to just 30 months in prison for sharing the depraved images.

He gave Clark a concurrent 15 month sentence for the extreme pornographic images and seven concurrent 12 month sentences for each of the downloading child porn charges. He added that Clark would serve only 15 months of the sentence in custody.

Clark was also issued with an indefinite sexual offences prevention order and told that his computer equipment would be destroyed.

NB: Versions of this story appeared in the Mirror and the Yellow Advertiser.

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