TEESIDE PAEDOPHILE CAUGHT WITH INDECENT IMAGES OF CHILDREN
A high-earning sales rep has been banned from downloading or taking pictures of children after police caught him with three indecent images on his computer.A Teesside Crown Court judge said John Hodgson was "on a knife edge" yesterday.
The court heard he admitted to the authorities that he still used the Internet to access pictures of children, prompting a police search.
This followed a conviction in 2000 for making indecent images of children, a three-year probation order, a sex offender's assessment and treatment programme and five years on the sex offenders' register.
On September 23, 2004, officers found 64,000 graphic files, mostly containing children under ten, including 431 images of children fully or partially clothed, said prosecutor Paul Newcombe.
But only three of the images were illegal and led to criminal charges, and these were of the least serious level in law.
They featured children aged 13 to 15, including children in "a variety of erotic poses", Mr Newcombe added.
Hodgson, 50, of Imperial Road, Billingham, admitted three charges of making an indecent picture of a child.
He told police he trawled the Internet and downloaded the pictures, tried to deal with his sexual feelings in a legal way, and believed they depicted adults who looked under-age.
Mr Newcombe said police also found a video of schoolgirls walking in the street, magazines with children modeling clothes and three pairs of children's knickers.
Dan Cordey, defending, said Hodgson would lose his pounds 30,000-a-year job if he was completely banned from using the Internet, which he had to access legitimately for work.
Judge Tony Briggs made a sexual offences prevention order prohibiting Hodgson from downloading or taking pictures of people under 18, and said he would not go to jail because he had already suffered public humiliation.
He gave Hodgson a three-year community rehabilitation order with supervision and ordered him to pay pounds 578 prosecution costs.
