September 2018 Sex offender convicted as offences soar A sex offender from Farnham has been handed a community order and placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years after pleading guilty to making an indecent ‘pseudo-photograph’ of a child. David Michael Stacey, 36, of Wey Meadow Close, was sentenced at Guildford Magistrates’ Court on September 4, 2018, after pleading guilty to making the image between November 16 and 21, 2017. According to Home Office guidance, a pseudo-photograph is an image made by computer-graphics or otherwise which appears to be a photograph. Stacey’s community order requires him to participate in an accredited sexual offenders treatment programme for 35 days, undertake a rehabilitation activity for up to 20 days, and unpaid work for 210 hours within the next 12 months. Stacey was also ordered to pay £85 in compensation, £85 costs to the Crown Prosecution Service, and to surrender his computer. He was given a five-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order strictly restricting his use of the internet and preventing him from being in the company of any child under the age of 18 “other than through the normal court of his daily events”. Finally, Stacey was ordered to register with the police in accordance with the Sexual Offences Act 2003 for five years.