August 2008 CARLISLE CHILD ABUSE IMAGES PERVERT JAILED A PERVERT who sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl was found to have hundreds of indecent pictures of children as young as five on his laptop computer. Brian Friel was yesterday jailed for three-and-a-half years and ordered to sign on the sex offenders’ register for life for his vile crimes. Carlisle Crown Court heard he had a previous conviction for assaulting a 12-year-old and was already on the offenders’ register, but failed to abide by it. He moved across Scotland and England using various false names before assaulting the child in Carlisle. Friel, 44, of Shaddon Mill, Shaddongate, pleaded guilty to sexual activity with a 13-year-old girl, failing to comply with the sex offenders’ register and to 20 counts of making indecent pictures of a child or children. The girl was speaking to someone on the phone when he touched her. The girl protested, but later that day he wrote her an explicit note. She again rejected his advances and he shredded the note. The girl – who now won’t go near boys because she fears they might do similar things to her and is considering counselling – told her mother what happened. Friel was later arrested. He told police that earlier in the day of the assault he had drank a couple of pints of cider and a shot of vodka, but said it had no effect on him and he denied the allegations. Officers then discovered his criminal past – a conviction in 1999 at the High Court in Edinburgh for assaulting a 12-year-old. They learned he had been moving all over the country Police also examined three laptop computers found at his home – with a total of 330 indecent illegal images of varying degrees of severity found on one of them. The prosecution estimated the age of the children as being between five and 13 years old. Friel told officers he had been looking for photographs of models aged 16-plus. He did not pay for the images – downloaded from the internet – or make money from them. Keith Thomas, defending, said Friel was drunk on occasion when viewing the images and that, individually, the offences were not of the worst of their kind. Friel was also banned indefinitely from working with children and subject of a string of conditions banning him from contact with under-16s.