Locations
St Lukes Road, Torquay, Devon, TQ2
Description
A man who filmed himself abusing a one-year-old baby has been jailed after an image was found on his mobile phone.
Barry Cornes claimed he was only touching the child out of curiosity and there was nothing sexual about it but a jury disagreed.
The mother of the baby was traced by police and made a victim impact statement saying she was sickened and devastated.
She had to go through the ordeal of holding her child as a doctor made a specialist examination which showed there had been no physical damage from the sexual assault.
Cornes, aged 47, of St Lukes Road, Torquay, denied sexual assault but was found guilty by a jury at Exeter Crown Court. He admitted taking an indecent image of a child.
He was jailed for three years, six months, put on the sex offenders’ register for life and made subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order which bans unsupervised contact with children.
Judge David Evans told him: “You are still in denial and have shown no remorse. The personal statement of the child’s mother makes plain the very significant distress which your offending caused.
“The child was particularly vulnerable because of her extremely young age. The taking of pictures is an aggravating feature.
“This conviction will doubtless haunt you for the rest of your life, and rightly so.”
Mr David Scutt, prosecuting, said the offence happened in January last year and came to light when the image was found by accident in a deleted section of Cornes’s phone.
His hand was identifiable in the images but he said he touched the child out of curiosity rather than for any sexual gratification.
The child’s mother made a victim statement which said: “I felt physically sick. Going to the medical centre to see if my baby was sexually damaged was the worst thing I have ever had to go through.