Oct 2003 Child pornography man spared jail A man who found children sexually attractive and had more than 5,000 indecent images of children on his computer has been spared jail. Gary Evans, 29, was visited by police at his Lyons Hall Road home in Braintree as part of the nationwide Operation Ore to investigate people downloading pornography from the internet. Police found indecent images on computers at the house, including one created just days before their visit on March 13. At an earlier magistrates’ court hearing Evans admitted 14 charges of making indecent photos of children and two offences of possessing images. At Chelmsford Crown Court on Friday, prosecutor Rupert Overbury said the images were made between January 15, 2000, and March 7, 2003. Investigators found 5,633 images, including 173 level-four images. Images are graded from one to five with five considered the worst. Some of the images appeared to show children having sex with adults. Mr Overbury said many of the images were bought from one internet site, which is marked as containing material which is illegal in some countries. At Evans’ home police found hundreds of pornographic videos, catalogues of children’s clothing, newspaper articles about children, including one about the deaths of children and material about under age sex and rape. They also found books about children and professional photos of them. Chelmsford Crown Court heard that Evans admitted he found the images sexually attractive but would not harm children in real life. Mr Overbury said: “He said he knew it was bad and wrong to look at the images. He said he had found children sexually attractive for as long as he could remember.” Allan Compton, mitigating, said Evans had never had a normal life, lived in a world of his own with no conventional social life. Judge Gareth Hawksworth said: “Your case causes the court considerable anxiety.” He said the collection of articles about child abuse “demonstrates an obsession and sexual interest in children.” He told Evans he could have jailed him for 15 months but he felt it would traumatise him and he needed rehabilitation. He was ordered to serve a three-year community rehabilitation order, attend 132 days of a sex offenders group and to register on the sex offenders’ register.