Locations
Silvester Close, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21
Description
A PAEDOPHILE who was found with nearly a quarter of a million indecent images on his laptop, some of which showed very young children being tortured, was said to be addicted to viewing them.
Ross McNaughton was sent to prison for four years after pleading guilty at Winchester Crown Court to six counts relating to making, distributing and possessing the images, some of which showed children as young as one-years-old being abused.
The 47-year-old, of Silvester Close, South View, was arrested by police in August last year, and tried to shut down a file sharing programme on his laptop when officers found him in his room.
A forensic examiner found McNaughton had searched the internet for child abuse of young children and had made and distributed thousands of the images, some of which were the most serious category A.
Prosecutor Sadie Rizzo said: The age of the children are extremely young and there are images showing distress to these children.
She told the court that the images were of female children, and that McNaughton viewed them every day between June 2014 and August 2015.
The court heard that McNaughton has a history of similar offences and had spent three months in prison for possessing indecent images in August 1997.
He last appeared in court in July 2006 for making and possessing indecent images of children, and was given a community rehabilitation order for three years.
Defending McNaughton, Adam Norris said: If he is not supervised thats when temptation creeps in.
He added: One might say this is something of a compulsion or addiction. Its almost like an addiction to a drug and Mr McNaughton knows that he will never be cured, if cured is the right word. But he must learn to manage it as others do.
Mr Norris described McNaughton as having an obsessive personality and said he was addicted to collecting, arranging, filing and storing the indecent images.
He told the court: Mr McNaughton is a solitary figure who doesnt interact within the real world. He leads a life that is online. He urged the judge to give credit for the fact McNaughton had been candid about his crimes and suggested he would be vulnerable in prison, asking for a sentence that would allow him to come out of custody and build some sort of life in the community.
Mr Norris told the court that McNaughtons 85-year-old mother was in remission from cancer, adding: It would be a tragedy if he served a sentence of such a length that his mother died whilst he was inside.
Judge Michael Vere Hodge said he had taken this into consideration but concluded: It simply cant affect the way in which I have to sentence you.
He described the number of images as staggeringly high showing child pornography of the worst kind. He added: To watch images of children in distress, being tortured in some, must put this in the worst possible category.
The judge sentenced McNaughton to three years in prison for count one making 7,621 category A images; two years for count two possessing 17,944 category B images; one year for count three possessing 227,633 category C images; four years for count four distributing 28,011 category A, B and C images; two years for count five being in possession of 4,223 indecent images with a view to distributing them; and one year for count six being in possession of extreme pornographic images, to run concurrently.
He was also issued with a sexual harm prevention order and will remain on the sex offenders register indefinitely.