November 2010 Child porn gets defendant 40 weeks in jail A LONELY paedophile viewed thousands of images of boys online to satisfy his ‘unresolved feelings’, a court has been told. Andrew Richardson, aged 43, of New Road, Brixham, downloaded and swapped sexual images of boys with other paedophiles after visiting websites – but he was monitored by a police online protection agency which seized his computer and found more than 3,000 illegal images and movies. At Exeter Crown Court yesterday Richardson was sentenced to 40 weeks in prison and told his ‘evil’ offending led to the abuse of children. He had previously admitted 18 counts of possessing for show, making and distributing indecent images of children. Prosecutor Howard Phillips told the court Richardson, a security guard, came to the attention of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency earlier this year, which monitored him visiting suspect websites. One of the sites was used by paedophiles to share and swap indecent photos and movies of children. It was a ‘heavily protected site’, Mr Phillips said, which required membership and a password to join. Police visited Richardson’s address on May 1 and seized his laptop, USB sticks and disks. Among the material were 2,688 images of Level 1 content and 399 at Level 3. They also found 54 movies of Level 4 and one at Level 5, the highest level of seriousness. Richardson told police he was bisexual and was trying to understand why he felt the way he did. He said he didn’t get any sexual gratification out of viewing the images. His use of the sites started in March 2009 and had ‘escalated’ from there, Mr Phillips added. Richardson’s solicitor Andrew Cooper said his client had been the victim of abuse as a boy and had ‘harboured feelings ever since then’ for teenage males. “He intended to try and find out more about these feelings,” said Mr Cooper. “On those lonely nights with no company he accessed the internet”, said Mr Cooper, and came across legal websites. From that site he then found links to chat-rooms and ‘got sucked into accessing this material’. He would then swap and download images and movies. Richardson admitted downloading but not viewing the Level 5 movie. Mr Cooper said: “It’s rather like going to a car boot sale and buying a job lot of LPs; some you like, some you don’t.” He said the defendant had since lost his job with a Torbay chemical company and had no friends. Sentencing, Mr Justice Jack said: “The evil of your offending, as you understand quite well, is that if it wasn’t for people downloading this material there would be rather less abuse and damaging of children who are involved in the activities which are filmed or photographed. I would like to be able to impose a sentence that provided for you to have the benefit of programmes designed to assist you, but as the law stands at the moment I can’t do that.” Richardson was jailed for 40 weeks for the eight most serious offences, with no separate penalty for the remainder.