Philip Coley 41

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A SOUTHAMPTON paedophile was caught with indecent screenshots of a young girl taken from Snapchat, a court heard.

Philip Coley searched the internet for terms including topless 12-year-old.

Prosecution barrister, Lucy Conroy told how the 39-year-old of Bitterne Road East, had images of children being raped and abused.

When police raided his home in Bitterne Road East, they seized a Samsung mobile telephone.

The device was subject to interrogation and contained a mix of images and videos showing youngsters being abused.

Ms Conroy told how Coley had screenshots from a Snapchat conversation involving imagery of a young girl involved in sexual activity.

Furthermore, he had three prohibited, overt and lewd cartoon images of children aged between eight and 12-years-old.

Appearing before Southampton Crown Court, he was charged with three counts of making indecent images of children. Some 53 files ranged from category A, the most serious, to category C.

He was also charged with possessing prohibited images of children. Coley admitted the offences spanning August and September of 2020.

Mitigating, Paul Walker said his client had no previous convictions and urged the judge to suspend any custodial sentence.

But Judge Christopher Parker QC jailed him for a total of 16 months.

Coley will also be subject to a ten-year sexual harm prevention order.

Commenting on the case, Detective Constable Andy Sims warned that children are particularly vulnerable to exploitation online with increased use of social media apps.

He said: Throughout our investigation Coley refused to identify his victim, meaning that somewhere out there is a child who has been abused by this man and needs support. We will continue to give him every opportunity to provide us with her details or give us any information which allows us to identify her. Online predators use various social media apps but in this case, it was Snapchat. Although Snapchat uses self-delete technology where images are deleted after a short period of time, the recipient can still take a screenshot so they can keep a permanent copy of the image.

"Lots of information and advice for parents and young people is available, especially at this time, which is Online Safety Week.