Locations
St Mary's Crescent, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, CV31
Description
When the police seized a mans computer they found movie clips of children as young as one being sexually abused by adults.
But a judge has decided the public will be better protected by Daniel Taylor having treatment and doing unpaid work than by him being jailed.
Taylor, 26, of St Marys Crescent, Leamington, had pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to three charges of making indecent images of children.
He was given a three-year community order and ordered to take part in a three-year sex offenders treatment programme, and to do 60 hours of unpaid work.
Recorder Christopher Hotten QC also made Taylor subject to a rehabilitation activity for 30 days and ordered him to register as a sex offender for five years and to pay 600 costs.
What did the judge actually say?
Sentencing Taylor, Recorder Hotten told him: The seriousness of what you did is that without consumers, theres no market.
Everybody who downloads images such as these helps to create a market and provides a reason for children to be abused in the appalling way these children were.
That is what you have done. Sitting alone in your room, it isolates you from what is going on all to children over the world in appalling circumstances.
But it seems to me the most important thing is to do what can be done to deter you from behaving in this way in the future.
Although this clearly passes the custody threshold, the public is likely to be better protected by my not sending you to prison today.
What was the evidence?
Prosecutor James Dunstan said that in August 2015 the police went to Taylors home after receiving intelligence that someone at the address had been downloading indecent material of children.
The door was answered by his partner, but when the officers then spoke to Taylor he told them they would find images on his red laptop, and showed them where it was.
The laptop and a memory stick were seized, and Taylor, who had downloaded images using a file-sharing app, was arrested.
When the police examined the laptop and the memory stick they found a total of 245 indecent images of children, all but five of which were movies.
They were all accessible to the user, not having been deleted after being viewed, and had file names which were explicit about their content, said Mr Dunstan.
There were 110 category A images showing children being subjected to the worst kind of abuse, along with 128 category B images and seven category C images.
And Mr Dunstan said that explicit search terms used by Taylor showed he had specifically been looking for indecent images of both girls and boys.
When he was interviewed Taylor admitted he had downloaded a couple of hundred images of children over the previous six to nine months, which he said he had initially done out of curiosity, but admitted getting sexual satisfaction from them.
Anything said in mitigation?
Andrew Tucker, defending, conceded: The offences themselves, of course, are horrible in their nature.
But he said Taylor, who had not distributed any of the material, had shown complete and utter frankness directing the police to the laptop and making highly significant admissions.
He has shown remorse, and he does have insight and understanding into what hes done.