JAMIE BUTT FROM SILVERTON CAUGHT WITH CHILD ABUSE IMAGES AND BESTIALITY MATERIALS

In October 2017, Jamie Butt, a 38-year-old call centre worker residing in Silverton, was convicted of possessing and creating indecent images of children, as well as extreme material depicting women engaging in sexual acts with dogs. The case unfolded after authorities in the United States provided crucial intelligence to British police, leading to Butt's arrest and subsequent investigation.

It was revealed that Butt had been engaging in prolonged sessions on his computer at his mother’s house in Silverton, often late into the night while consuming multiple cans of lager. During these sessions, he downloaded over 100 images and videos that depicted the sexual abuse of minors, including some that showed serious and penetrative abuse of young girls. His collection also included a vast array of mainstream adult content, totaling approximately 33,000 movies and still images, but his interest extended into the darker corners of the internet, where he searched for and accessed material involving schoolgirls in uniform.

The investigation was triggered when law enforcement agencies in the USA identified his IP address as having downloaded illegal content from a file-sharing website. This information was relayed to British authorities, who then traced the activity to Butt’s residence in Silverton, near Tiverton. Upon executing a search warrant, police discovered that Butt’s computer contained 108 items of illegal material. Among these, three still images and one video fell into the most severe category, depicting children suffering from penetrative sexual abuse. The remaining content was classified into lesser categories, but some had been deleted, while 67 items remained stored on his device. Notably, the category A video had been accessed three times, indicating repeated viewing.

During police interviews, Butt admitted to searching for legal images of individuals over 18 but confessed to having a specific fetish for schoolgirl outfits. He also acknowledged that some of the images, both adult and child, had been downloaded during his evening hours, often while drinking five or six cans of lager at his mother’s house. His searches included terms such as “teen” and “PTHC,” an abbreviation for pre-teen hardcore, which further underscored his disturbing interests.

Judge Erik Salomonsen sentenced Butt to six months in prison, suspended for two years. Additionally, Butt was ordered to participate in the Horizon internet sex offenders programme, pay costs amounting to £1,500, and register as a sex offender. A Sexual Harm Prevention Order was also imposed, granting police authority to monitor his online activity moving forward. The judge emphasized the severity of Butt’s problem, stating, “You have a real problem. Your problem is that you are addicted to pornography. It is clear you accessed a very, very large number of images of adults. Alongside that, you strayed to the extreme edges of pornography and found yourself looking at images of children. It was not entirely by accident because the search terms made it clear that on occasions you set out to look for them.”

Prosecutor Tom Bradnock highlighted that the police raid was initiated after the US tip-off, which revealed Butt’s illegal downloads. The investigation uncovered that Butt’s computer contained a disturbing collection of illegal images, with some depicting the most severe forms of abuse. His actions have now led to significant legal consequences, reflecting the ongoing efforts of law enforcement to combat online child exploitation and abuse.