August 2014 Former Plymouth McDonalds worker had 450,000 child abuse pictures A FORMER McDonald’s worker who had more than 450,000 pictures and videos of child abuse has been spared jail. Police found a huge haul of indecent material on computers and hard drives belonging to 32-year-old Mark Wilby, much of which involved children aged eight or nine years old. Investigators stopped categorising the images when they reached 2,000, but Plymouth Crown Court heard Wilby had about 450,000 in total. Prosecutor Sarah Vince said: “The offences came to the attention of the police following a search of his home which he shares with his mother. The warrant was as a result of police intelligence suggesting that he was accessing child pornography over the internet.” Ms Vince said investigators analysing Wilby’s computers and external hard drives stopped recording the details of the material when they reached 2,000. She said his computers contained 1,299 images and two movies of category C (the lowest level), four images and three movies of category B and 11 images and three movies of category A. Ms Vince said this material involved children aged 8 and 9 years old. They also found 101 images and 30 movies classed as ‘extreme pornography’ which did not involve children. Wilby’s external hard drive was found to contain 529 category C images, two category B and one category A, along with five ‘extreme pornography’ images. Jo Martin, for Wilby, said: “What he has is an obsessive compulsive behaviour in terms of downloading pornography and giving in to things that give him the high that he feels he needs.” Wilby, of Townshend Avenue, Keyham, was handed a nine-month jail term, suspended for two years. He was also made subject to probation supervision and a Sexual Offenders Prevention Order. Judge Graham Cottle told Wilby: “You have not sought to minimize your responsibility for all of this, you have willingly sought help and will continue to do so. You are, therefore, a perfectly suitable candidate for the sexual offenders treatment programme. “However, these are serious offences and they must be met with a custodial sentence, but I am prepared to suspend the sentence.”