A paedophile caught with a catalogue of sickening images of child abuse, some against babies and toddlers, was jailed for five years today.
Police uncovered Richard Adam Neal’s horrifying library of pictures on his phone and memory card just two months after he was released from prison.
A Teesside Crown Court judge said the child pornography addict’s case was “as serious as I’ve encountered during my time”.
Officers found the the pervert’s depraved gallery - thousands of vile photographs and films - on a memory card in his wallet and a phone in his pocket.
On the card alone, police found 150 images of children of the most severe type, nearly all of different child victims.
They showed children of an average age of five - but some babies and toddlers - being subjected to sexual abuse by adults, said prosecutor Christine Egerton.
She said children were shown bound and in visible pain and distress in the still and moving pictures.
There were thousands more pictures, either in less serious categories or “indicative of a sexual interest in children”, among more than 30,000 pictures on the card.
More than 3,500 indecent and prohibited images of children were found on his phone, including 776 at the most serious level.
The pictures were discovered in a routine police visit to Neal’s home at the South Bank bail hostel on October 28 last year, two months after his release on licence from prison.
Neal, 30, insisted he had nothing he should not have, but he was sweating, fidgeting and nervous.
Now of no fixed address, he admitted making and possessing indecent photos of children, possessing prohibited images of children and breach of a sexual offences prevention order (SOPO).
This was the third time he was in court for having child abuse images which he had downloaded from the internet.
He was convicted of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child in August 2009, jailed for two-and-a-half years and given the 10-year SOPO, which banned him from having any pictures of children.
He was given another three-and-a-half-year extended sentence in September 2013 for possessing more indecent images and breaching the SOPO.
He has now been recalled to complete that sentence, which ends in February 2017.
Neal explained his behaviour by saying the weight of the restrictions on him led him to seek solace in alcohol and amphetamine.
And through his lawyer, he complained that he committed the new crimes because he was not given help on a programme in prison and found himself without benefits and “at a very low ebb”.
Graham Brown, defending, said Neal was a solitary and isolated character who was “very distressed and alarmed” by his own actions.
He said: “The defendant doesn’t want to be in this position.
“He is concerned - that’s an understatement - at the situation and the predilection which these offences have shown.
“He has never proceeded to a direct personal contact offence.”
He added that Neal did not generate any of the images himself and did not pose a “significant risk of serious harm” to the public requiring another extended sentence.
Sentencing, Judge Tony Briggs described the images as hideous, disturbing, disgusting, ghastly and vile, involving sexual abuse on young and very young children.
He told Neal: “It is clear from the information that I have on you that you are in the grip of a powerful addiction to material of this nature.
“You freely accept that you’re sexually attracted to young children.”
He said Neal committed the crimes within a very short time after his prison release, knowing they would likely land him inside again.
He jailed Neal for five years, but by law the sentence had to be concurrent and could not be added to the term Neal is currently serving.
Neal was given a second indefinite SOPO, will be on the sex offenders’ register for life and is likely to be barred from working with children.
No comments:
Post a Comment