Locations
Hollybank, Moore, Warrington, WA4
Description
A paedophile caught with a vile collection of 12,587 images of child abuse was jailed for 15 months.
Daniel Gunson, 45, of Hollybank, Moore, was locked up on Friday at Chester Crown Court having previously pleaded not guilty to six offences of possessing and making indecent images, possessing prohibited images and having extreme pornography involving animals.
‘Deviant’ Gunson was caught after police seized digital devices including a laptop, an external hard drive and a Samsung phone.
Officers trawling the files uncovered a hoard of imagery of sexual abuse of children from babies to older teens.
Sarah Badrawy, prosecuting, said the pictures and videos covered the range of seriousness from the worst in Category A through to Category C.
Judge Patrick Thompson detailed the imagery further, stressing that the public ‘should know the sort of material people are viewing’.
He went onto describe examples of photographs and videos, including clips of infants in visible pain and distress undergoing sexual abuse in ordeals lasting nearly two hours.
Police confirmed more than 12,500 child abuse images from 30,000 images discovered, with a further 138,524 files that were not examined.
There were 2,951 items in Category A, 3,244 in Category B and 6,392 in Category C.
In addition, his search history was littered with terms and recurrent themes relating to still and moving images of offences against children.
Gunson was arrested in 2015 but claimed innocence via a prepared statement after a series of no comment interviews.
The matter was due to go to trial this September but the defendant change his plea in April.
The court heard that a previous partner of Gunson had broken up with him in 1996 after discovering him looking at indecent images, but he claimed he had no idea how they ended up on his computer.
Gunson, in a grey suit, purple shirt and thick black-rimmed glasses, stood blank-faced for the duration of the hearing.
Elderly family members covered their mouths as His Honour Patrick Thompson listed the offences and told Gunson the only place he could go was prison.
Simon Parry, defending, said his client had no previous convictions and had received an indication he would be given a 20%-25% discount for his guilty please from another judge.
He petitioned Judge Thompson for a suspended sentence to enable Gunson so that he could undergo a sexual offenders treatment programme, which would not be available to him in prison.
He added that a probation report had assessed the defendant as being of ‘low risk’ of reconviction, a claim rubbished as ‘utterly astonishing’ by the judge.
Judge Thompson imposed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order on Gunson and ordered that he be placed on the sex offenders’ register, also for 10 years.
Sentencing him, he said: “You entered a defence statement claiming you knew nothing of this material that it somehow appeared on your computer.
“You said you had obtained your computer from someone else and it was their responsibility.
“That wasn’t the case at all.
“You were the person who had downloaded it and you were the person with a deviant interest in material of this kind, material of children being raped, from babies to teenage children.
“You seem to have an interest in all of that.”
He added: “If it wasn’t for people like you with this deviant interest, these children would not be getting raped so I’m afraid you bear responsibility.”