GARY DOBSON FROM CAPEL ST MARY FACES CROWN COURT OVER NEARLY 900 CHILD INDECENT IMAGES

In June 2014, a man from Capel St Mary, named Gary Dobson, is set to face sentencing at Ipswich Crown Court after admitting to the possession of nearly 900 indecent images of children. Dobson, aged 52 and residing at Little Tufts in Capel St Mary, appeared before magistrates where he pleaded guilty to a single count of making an indecent photograph of a child.

The court was informed that Dobson had downloaded these images from a pornographic website to which he was subscribed. However, it was also revealed that Dobson believed the website only contained adult pornography, and he was unaware of the illegal content until later. His legal representative, Hugh Rowland, emphasized that Dobson is not a paedophile, stating, “My client is not a paedophile.”

Rowland explained that Dobson was at a vulnerable point in his life when he became involved with the website. The site, which he subscribed to, claimed to offer only legal adult content and explicitly stated it did not host illegal images. Unfortunately, Dobson was misled by the website’s operator, who introduced him to images of a certain disturbing nature. Rowland clarified that Dobson did view these images but did not initially realize their illegal status.

He further stated that Dobson had a subscription to the website for some time but chose to cancel it before police visited his home in 2013. The court heard that Dobson’s method of downloading the images was unsophisticated; he did not save or store the images on his device but viewed them directly. He voluntarily ceased viewing these images once he became aware of their illegality.

Prosecutor Wayne Ablett recounted that in 2011, Gloucestershire police gathered intelligence leading to the identification of an IP address associated with Dobson’s computer. This information was passed to Suffolk police in 2013, who subsequently executed a search warrant at Dobson’s residence in September of that year. When his computer was examined the following month, authorities discovered a significant number of illegal images: 395 at Level One on the Copine Scale, 138 at Level Two, 174 at Level Three, 183 at Level Four, and a video classified at Level Five, which is the most severe category involving torture or sadism.

Ablett noted that Dobson admitted to being in a “very dark place” during the time he accessed these images, spending considerable time browsing such websites and viewing pornography. Magistrates deemed the case to be of such seriousness that it will be transferred to Ipswich Crown Court for sentencing proceedings.