February 2021 Pub landlord exposed as paedophile ‘with deep sexual interest’ in child abuse A pub landlord had almost 1,500 photographs of child sexual abuse on his mobile phone, a court has heard. Some of the images were of children as young as four or five being horribly abused. Swansea Crown Court heard police officers executed a search warrant at Gary Stephen Mayor’s house in March 2020. Robin Rouch, prosecuting, said Mayor admitted to officers there were images on his phone and said he had only downloaded them out of “curiosity”. The phone was seized for examination, and Mayor was arrested. In his subsequent interview the 34-year-old told officers he had obtained the images from a number of different adult sites but denied getting any sexual gratification from them, claiming he “got a thrill from accessing something that was forbidden”. The court heard a detailed search of the phone found almost 1,500 images including those of Category A – the most serious kind. These Category A images featured children estimated to be as young as four or five being sexually abused. Mr Rouch said there was also evidence two of the images had been shared as attachments to messages sent to the defendant’s mother and wife though it was not clear why they had been sent or if the attachments had been opened. Mayor, of Kenfig Place, Bonymaen, Swansea, admitted three counts of making indecent images – downloading them – as well as one count of possessing extreme pornography, one count of possessing a prohibited image, and two counts of distributing indecent images. The court heard he has no previous convictions. Mr Rouch said Mayor was a designated premise supervisor for a bar and the judge had the power to notify the local authority’s licensing department of the conviction. Judge Paul Thomas QC told Mayor the children in the images were being horribly abused and degraded and the pictures put online so people like him could masturbate over them. He said: “If I had a pound for every time a defendant before me for this kind of offending said they were acting out of curiosity I would be sunning myself on a Caribbean island at the moment. It isn’t curiosity. You know it isn’t curiosity… You have a deep sexual interest in the sexual abuse of children. The idea it was motivated by anything other than a paedophiliac interest is one I reject.” The judge said he was persuaded by the contents of the pre-sentence report that rehabilitation would be best achieved in a non-custodial setting. Giving the defendant credit for his guilty pleas the judge sentenced Mayor to a total of eight months in prison suspended for two years and ordered him to complete an Horizon community sex offenders programme, a rehabilitation course, and 150 hours of unpaid work. Judge Thomas added that he would notify the licensing authority of the conviction and what it, and Mayor’s employers, decided to do as a result of the prosecution were matters for them.