Locations
Bolton Crescent, Basingstoke, RG22
Description
A MAN from Basingstoke was found in possession of more than 178,000 child sex abuse images, including of newborn babies and toddlers, a court has heard.
Keith Sayer collected the tranche of images, stored on a network of 19 devices, USB sticks and hard drives, in a “deliberate and systematic” filing system that caused “immeasurable” harm to babies and children “across the world”.
The court heard how his collection started immediately after he was released from prison after previously being found in possession of indecent images of children. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison in 2014.
The 39-year-old admitted that he was “sick” and “obsessed” and told a psychiatrist that he was spending five hours a day looking at the images and movies.
Sayer, formerly of Bolton Crescent in South Ham, was also found in possession of six paedophile manuals, as well as cable ties, masking tape, bungee ties, children’s colouring sets and a newspaper article on the abduction of a child.
These were found when police raided his bedsit, prosecutor Sophie Chaplain told Winchester Crown Court on Thursday.
Police were first tipped off to someone accessing indecent images of children in April 2019, when they detected two IP addresses searching for the content.
They traced it to Sayer, and when his property was searched, he showed officers to a cupboard under a sink where he had hidden the devices – of which he was banned from using under a Sex Offenders Protection Order (SOPO) issued after his previous conviction.
When they searched the devices, they found a “deliberate and systematic” filing system of the offending photographs and videos, which constituted more than 10,000 images at category A.
The Sentencing Council state that category A offences include “penetrative activity” as well as activity involving “an animal or sadism”.
Ms Chaplain also told the court that he had more than 1,000 movies saved to his stockpile.
Sayer, who appeared via video link from Lewes prison in East Sussex, was also said to have used the TOR browser, which can allow users to access the dark web and hide their identity.
In mitigation, Sayer was said to have had “nothing else to do” other than search for and look at child sex abuse images.
“He has never had a job, he had no ambition for himself,” defence counsel Rose Burns told the court.
“He doesn’t have any intimate relationships with anyone and never has. He doesn’t have social interaction and says it is not something he was able to have.”
She labelled his addiction to these images as an “illness, a disease”, like any other addiction.
Applying for a community order so that Sayer can be given treatment, she said that a prison sentence was not benefitting the public nor him, adding: “It is the only way that this man is going to be diverted from his compulsive addiction.”
However, Recorder Adam Feest decided that he would give a longer prison sentence than guidelines would suggest, adding: “It is sometimes said that people who view images of child abuse don’t cause harm to children, but that is incorrect.
“Anyone who has images of children being raped is creating a market for those type of images and that market harms children across the world.
“Where someone has this quantity of images involving the rape of babies and other children the harm that has been caused is impossible for me to measure.”
Sayer was sentenced to 32 months in prison for the six charges of making indecent images – discounted for early guilty pleas – as well as two years for the breach of the SOPO, to be served consecutively.
For possessing six paedophile manuals, he was given a six-month custodial sentence to be served consecutively, resulting in a total prison term of three years and two months.
However, Recorder Feest admitted he is likely to only serve half of that sentence.
He ordered an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order, an automatic disqualification from working with children and the forfeiture and destruction of the images and manuals.
Additionally, he was ordered to pay a victim surcharge.
An NSPCC spokesperson said: “Behind these images are often children who have been subjected to unthinkable pain and suffering.
"By continually seeking out horrific quantities of this sickening material Sayer has helped to leave a trail of devastation by fuelling demand for more children to be abused.