Brierfield disabled grandad jailed after police find child porn stash

Disabled Stephen Brown had downloaded images of girls aged between about 10 and 16 being abused by adults and films of women having sex with dogs. When he was arrested, he claimed most of the girls were, in his view, over 18, although he had got some of the pictures, Burnley Crown Court heard, off a “pre-teens” website.

The hearing was told 60-year-old Brown was a married man, with “many grandchildren,” one of whom used the computer under his supervision. He had lost a leg after an accident and was mostly confined to a wheelchair. The defendant was said to have shown an interest in obscene images for about three years.

Brown admitted three charges of possessing extreme pornography and nine allegations of making an indecent photo of a child, from level one to level four. The defendant, of Coronation Road, Brierfield, was sent to prison for 26 weeks. He had no previous convictions.

He was disqualified from working with children, placed on the sex offenders register for seven years and given a sexual offences prevention order for the same length of time. Brown is banned from using or owning a computer with internet access which does not have software designed to prevent access to indecent photos of children installed and in operation.

Judge Graham Knowles told him he had committed “a grave crime” and had minimised and denied much of what he had done to a probation officer. He had limited victim awareness and had told the officer the children were willing participants, although he had later changed and opened up to a sex offender worker.

The judge said each and every child in the 39 images is and was a human being. He told the defendant: “Each one was degraded and abused by the people who created these images and by you.”

Mr Stephen Parker (prosecuting) said police went to Brown’s home last March and seized a computer which was sent to the Police High Tech Crime Unit for forensic analysis. The indecent images were discovered.

The defendant was arrested and accepted the extreme pornography was his, but at first said he had never downloaded child porn. He was shown some of the pictures of youngsters, accessed through a pre-teens site and accepted the girls were under 18. Brown told officers a lot of the images he looked at were from American sites and were, in his view, of girls aged 18 or 19.

Mr Martin Hackett, for Brown, said: “I accept the offences cross the custody threshold, but he need not lose his liberty today, bad though these images are.”

The defendant had suffered an “adverse reaction” from people after the case was reported in the local newspaper. His wife was standing by him and Brown was more worried about her welfare than his own.

Mr Hackett said the offences were out of character and Brown was assessed by the probation officer as posing a low risk of reoffending.

The barrister added: “He knows he can’t blame anybody but himself. These offences have destroyed him. He has a number of children and grandchildren and has been in work for the vast majority of his life.”