August 2013 Whitefield man jailed for downloading thousands of indecent images of children A Whitefield man who accessed over 8,500 images of child pornography and attempted to destroy the evidence has been jailed. Adam Walton, aged 29, of Calder Crescent, was jailed for eight months at Bolton Crown Court today (Thursday) after admitting 28 offences including possessing indecent images of children, possessing extreme pornography and possessing prohibited images. Walton downloaded and viewed the images on June 19, 23 and 30 2012 before his former partner alerted the police to his activities. Police attended Walton’s home on August 1 2012 and seized a number of computers. While officers were loading them into their car, Walton threw a laptop on the floor in an attempt to destroy it, so that the indecent images could not be retrieved. He attempted to do this a second time but was stopped by officers, however the hard drive of the laptop was not damaged and officers were still able to recover the images. Police found 8,573 indecent images of children, with over 1,500 of the images being classed as level four or level five under the Protection of Children Act 1978. Level four images are classed as ‘penetrative sexual activity between children and adults’, and level five images are described as ‘sadism or bestiality’. Walton was also ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years, and will be the subject of a 10 year sexual offences prevention order. Detective Constable Ruth Spencer, said: “Walton had thousands of indecent images on his computer and went to extraordinary lengths to try and destroy it when he was first arrested. “Despite his best efforts he was not successful and we were able to retrieve and forensically examine his hard drive. “What we found was a catalogue of child abuse images that Walton had sourced from the internet. “These images reflect a sordid and dark side of the internet that we and other enforcement agencies work tirelessly to police and when we receive information or intelligence that someone is involved in such depraved activity we will take decisive and robust action.”