November 2018 Former council social worker jailed over child sexual abuse images A former council social worker caught creating indecent images of children has been jailed. Social worker Jonathan Ward of Miles Walk, Hove was found to have more than 100 inappropriate images of children on his computers last year. Ward, 47, was given seven months suspended for 24 months after police had been tipped off about the images on his computers. During his suspended sentence however he bought a smartphone, which breached the Sexual Harm Prevention Order that was imposed on him to restrict him accessing the internet. He also failed to notify the court about a weekend trip to Scotland in August this year, which breached a notification order. Judge Jeremy Gold gave Ward a 12-month prison sentence for failing to follow these restrictions at Hove Crown Court. The monitoring software installed on his laptop also notified police that he had searched the word “suicide” on the internet. Ward worked for the child protection unit at Brighton and Hove City Council before moving to Surrey County Council when police found the images on his home computer after a tip off. He was a social worker with Brighton and Hove City Council from 1999-2015. Then two years ago, police traced an IP address to Ward and his computers and phones were seized and he was arrested in December 2016. Two laptops found at his home contained more than 100 images of children, many in the most serious category. A carrier bag was also found at his home containing girls’ knickers and a stash of pornographic DVDs. After he was caught with the images Ward told police officers that he was addicted to pornography.