July 2008 Child porn pervert was on brink of breakdown A MAN shopped to police by his girlfriend after she found he had been viewing child pornography on her computer has been ordered to attend a sex offender programme. Ian Hart, a retail stock controller, was arrested after partner Sarah discovered he had looked at indecent images of young girls while he had been using her computer at the home they shared at Wyton. Mother-of-two Ms Hinds immediately ended the relationship with Hart, who has two young daughters from a previous marriage. Ashamed and full of remorse, Hart, 31, deleted all the offending material, but forensic analysis turned up more than 1,200 pictures of naked and semi-naked girls, many aged between eight and 12-years-old. Hart, who admitted at a previous hearing 15 charges of making indecent photographs – all at Level One, the lowest grade of seriousness on a specially-set scale relating to child pornography – was put on probation supervision for three years with a requirement that he attends the Thames Valley Sex Offenders’ Programme. Cambridge magistrates also banned him from using the internet to view adult or child pornography sites or visit chatrooms and prohibited him from working with children under the age of 18. Now without a job and living at The Gables, in Sturmer, near Haverhill, Hart maintains his viewing of the images is “inexplicable” but was not for sexual gratification. In mitigation, Nick Barnes, representing Hart, emphasised that the images were of a low level of seriousness and did not depict sexual activity. It appeared, he added, Hart had been experiencing “a slow but lengthy mental breakdown” after the deaths of all the members of his immediate family, including a drug-addicted brother. “This is an intelligent man who is trying to work through his problems,” added Mr Barnes. “He has engaged with a counsellor and his GP.” Hart’s ex-wife has made it clear he is going to have difficulty in seeing his daughters, and it seems likely that anything other than unsupervised contact is on the cards from now on, the court was told. His details have already been lodged on the Sex Offenders’ Register.
