June 2022 Pervert with 1,500 child abuse images dodges jail as cancer-hit wife in hospital A pervert caught with more than 1,500 images and videos of sexually-abused children has dodged jail. Mark Coxon amassed the huge collection of images and videos showing children as young as just three months old being abused. And when the 67-year-old was interviewed by police he described the children as ‘willing participants’. Now Coxon, of Peckforton View, Kidsgrove, has been handed a three-year community order after admitting six counts of possessing indecent images of children. Police raided Coxon’s home in April 2020. They seized a computer tower and two USB sticks. Prosecutor Ben Lawrence told Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court: “There was some level of awareness because they were encrypted. He had used a browser to access the dark web. There were a number of young children as young as three months. They had been accessed for a four-year period from 2016. He is a man of previous good character.” The court heard that Coxon had been accessing ‘lawful adult porn’ for 15 years before moving onto child sexual abuse images. Judge Sally Hancox told him: “Over a four-year period you were accessing material that was not only sexual in nature but showed the sex abuse of children. I note with sadness that the age range of the children is at the youngest a child who was months old. “When the images were looked at you had already been arrested and had been spoken to by the police about them. What’s worrying about your interview is that whilst you made admissions you indicated that you didn’t feel like you were doing anything wrong in the privacy of your own home. You felt that the images didn’t show anything other than willing participants. That’s not how these images work.” The community order includes 80-hours of unpaid work. He is now subject to a five-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, must pay £380 court costs, and not delete his internet history