Locations
Davenham Way, Middlewich, Cheshire, CW10
Description
A man who collated a sick online library of child abuse victims on his home PC over a period of eight years was finally exposed after he was caught leering over a picture of a 17-year-old girl on the social media platform X.
Craig Adams, 34, secretly kept hundreds of indecent images of children being abused on his computer for his own perverted pleasure, including images of a baby and images of bestiality. But he was eventually reported to police due to ''suspicious activity'' on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, when he received a picture of another internet user's girlfriend when she was 17.
In direct messages on X the other man said: “You must like jailbait” to which Adams replied that he wanted to ''see it all", followed by disgusting suggestions. The user then messaged back saying: “Sent.''
Officers raided Adams' home in Davenham Way, Middlewich, Cheshire in June last year, seized his PC and mobile phone and found to 683 still images of children, 137 of which were in highest category A, 102 in category B and 444 in category C.
He also had 45 “disgusting” images which “portrayed, in an explicit and realistic way" acts of bestiality. The sexually exploited and abused children, both male and female, were aged up to 12-years-old, and included babies. All had been gathered by Adams between March 2015 and 15th June 2023.
At Chester Crown Court, Adams whose girlfriend is standing by him, pleaded guilty to four offences related to making or possessing indecent images and one offence of possessing extreme pornographic images.
He was sentenced to 10 months in prison suspended for two years with requirements he complete 35 rehabilitation activity days and 200 hours of unpaid work. He faced up to three years jail under sentencing guidelines.
Prosecutor Thomas McLoughlin said: “On June 14, officers attended the defendant’s address having been passed intelligence that his Twitter account had been used to share indecent images of children.
“His address was searched and a number of items were seized, a Samsung Galaxy mobile phone and a Vimeo 8 mobile phone. There was a full download taken on both devices. Details show data being present from April 2015.
“By way of overview, there was the presence of both males and females up to 12 years of age and a baby. The extreme pornography included bestiality matters. The defendant was subsequently interviewed but gave no comment.''
In mitigation, defence counsel Mark Connor said: “The defendant has the support of his long-term partner and father and his mother. His partner is here today but the defendant did not want her to come into the court.
“In my submissions, Mr Adams has had a significant period of time since this arrest to reflect on his offending behaviour and consider what he has done and the pattern of offending that he has got himself into.
''He is very fearful of receiving a custodial sentence. He is an intelligent man who has thought long and hard about his criminal behaviour and how it developed and it has to be conceded developed over a significant period of time. He was refreshingly frank in an interview with the probation officer and did not seek to minimise or justify his conduct.
“He accepted that it was morally unacceptable and harmful and that ultimately it was to satisfy his own sexual gratification. It is not often in these types of cases that defendants are so forthright and frank about their own shameful behaviour.''
Adams was also made subject to a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years and made to sign on the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years.
Judge Simon Berkson said: “You have a partner and a good job nevertheless, between 2015 and 2023, a substantial period of time, you downloaded on your computer 683 indecent images of children. Each one of these images displayed some sort of abuse committed to a child for you to happily look at whenever you wanted to over those years.
“You also had a substantial number of images of extreme pornography, of people engaging in sexual activity with animals. These are serious offences and there were a number of different victims, children suffering abuse for you to look at.
“One of those children has been described as a baby. You also had on that computer a way of cleaning up things on that computer. But the mitigating factors are that you have never been in trouble in your life. You are in a good job and you have a steady relationship. Both your partner and your father speak highly of you.''