Locations
Howell Road, Exeter, Devon, EX4
Description
A paedophile has been jailed for deliberately deleting the internet search history on his laptop.
Justin Sanders, 26, who is also known as Justin Washington, installed an app on the machine designed to clean it of evidence, Exeter Crown Court heard.
Sanders is a convicted sex offender who was subject to a court order banning him from deleting his internet search history.
But when police checked up on him last year they found child abuse images on his phone.
They also discovered he had installed CCleaner software on his laptop and used it to delete evidence of what he had been looking at during lockdown.
He told a judge that he had only deleted cookies, temporary files and caches to make his computer work better but the judge said the evidence pointed to him deleting indecent images of children.
Recorder Don Tait said: "He was deliberately and knowingly deleting incriminating and significant evidence from his laptop."
Sanders was jailed for two years.
The defendant, of Howell Road, Exeter, admitted two offences of having indecent images of children on his phone. He also admitted breaching the terms of his Sexual Harm Prevention Order imposed in 2016.
Mr Brian Fitzherbert, prosecuting, said police could not find evidence of exactly what images Sanders had deleted from this laptop. But they found a conversation Sanders had on Facebook with another sex offender in which they shared enthusiastic paedophilic opinions on a child anime character.
The defendant has previous convictions for possessing indecent images of children and for sexual offences against boys.
Ms Emily Pitts, defending, said Sanders knew he had breached the terms of his SHPO by deleting cookies with CCleaner but said his police offender manager had told him he had permission to do so.
He was someone who needed help for his behaviour and would not get that in prison, she said.
"Custody is a damaging environment for him," she added. "It is not going to address his longer term issues. Custody is not going to help him and not going to help the public or protect the public.
"What is needed is structure and tailored intervention."