Locations
Furnace Bank, Carmarthen, SA31
Description
Carmarthen man jailed for child abuse images and breaching sex offender order
Mattie Tomassen, 34, of Furnace Bank, Carmarthen, has been sentenced to 26 months in prison for possessing indecent images of children and breaching a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO).
He was previously jailed for eight months in June 2025 for possession of indecent images and made subject to an SHPO requiring him to register internet-enabled devices with police and allow access on request. Acting on intelligence, officers arrested him on 19 March at his Carmarthen accommodation on suspicion of further image offences. His Motorola phone was seized; he gave the PIN but refused the separate code for a secure folder, claiming it may have been pre-installed. Argos confirmed the phone was new and not reconditioned. Police could not access the folder but found messages in which Tomassen told a contact: “This looks like one in my secure folder.” He was released under investigation.
On 9 July he was rearrested after e-Safe monitoring software on another phone he owned alerted police that he had accessed X (formerly Twitter) multiple times and viewed child abuse material. He answered “no comment” in interview but gave the phone PIN. Forensic examination found 12 images of young boys being sexually abused, including two Category A images showing rape. The images were deleted or in the cache but had previously been accessible.
Tomassen pleaded guilty to breaching the SHPO and to possession of Category A, B and C indecent images. He has two previous convictions for six offences, including the June 2025 indecent images matter that led to the original SHPO, and a December conviction for threatening to destroy property after telling a community psychiatric nurse he planned to smash cars at police headquarters and preferred prison to the streets.
Defence counsel cited a pre-sentence report on Tomassen’s drug and alcohol misuse and social isolation at the time of the offences, and asked for a community sentence to allow probation work. Judge Huw Rees noted Tomassen’s wilful refusal to reveal the secure folder code. He told him the children in the images were real youngsters being sexually abused to satisfy the “unhealthy, degenerate, and lustful demands” of people like him, which fuel demand for such material. The number of images was not large, but the judge stressed the reality of the abuse.
With a one-third discount for the guilty pleas, Tomassen received 14 months for the images and 12 months consecutive for the SHPO breach. He will serve up to half in custody before release on licence. A new 10-year SHPO was imposed, and he will remain on the sex offenders register for the same period.