September 2021 Kenton pervert jailed after being caught with child abuse images for second time A car firm employee and fromer social worker caught with illegal images for a second time while on a court order for doing the same thing has been jailed. Shaun Devlin had been given a chance to address his vile urges in 2018, when he was given a community order for making child abuse images. But when police went to do a risk assessment at his home a year later, he was found to have done it again. He had breached his sexual harm prevention order by having a phone which he had not declared, deleting history on it and failing to hand it over to police. When officers found it, they discovered it contained further child abuse images, featuring children as young as four. Now the 52-year-old car worker, of Harehills Tower, Kenton, Newcastle, has been locked up for 12 months. Omar Ahmad, prosecuting, told Newcastle Crown Court Devlin was sentenced to a community order in March 2018 for making indecent images between 2014 and 2017. A sexual harm prevention order was imposed to try to control his behaviour. Officers attended his home in March 2019 to do a risk review. Mr Ahmad said: “He was asked if he had any internet enabled devices or a mobile phone and he lied, saying his phone was away being repaired. “After a search, an internet enabled phone was found in his bedroom. “He admitted it was his and it contained two videos involving indecent images of children.” When his phone was examined, it was found to contain seven of the most serious, category A, images, including two videos, nine category B pictures and two category C photographs. The category A videos showed a male child aged between four and seven. The other images appeared to have been deleted, the court heard. Devlin pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of a child and breaching his sexual harm prevention order. Judge Edward Bindloss jailed him for 12 months and ordered he must sign the sex offenders register and be subject to a sexual harm prevention order for the next ten years. December 2018 Social worker who used dark web to view indecent images of children is struck off A social worker who used the ‘dark web’ to access indecent images of children as young as three years old has been struck off. Shaun Devlin admitted viewing vile images “on a regular basis” over three years while employed as a social worker by Durham County Council. Now a disciplinary panel has ruled Devlin should be permanently barred from the profession that is there to “protect vulnerable people from abuse rather than support it”. The Health & Care Professions Tribunals Service (HCPTS) said they could not be sure service users “would not be at risk of harm from him” and that “members of the public would be dismayed to know their children could be under the care of a social worker convicted of these offences”. The panel heard that Devlin had been employed as a social worker by Durham County Council since 2002. But in May 2017 the authority was told by Northumbria Police that he had admitted using the ‘dark web’ to access indecent images of children “on a regular basis”. The hearing was told he did this at home and via his mobile phone, but did not use any county council equipment to view the images. On February 16 this year Devlin pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children at North Tyneside Magistrates’ Court. A month later, the panel heard, he was sentenced to a Community Order for three years, with the sentences for each of the four charges to run concurrently. Devlin was also made the subject of an electronically monitored curfew for six months and a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for five years. The panel’s report said: “From the remarks of the sentencing judge in the Crown Court it is clear that the images were not only still images but also films, of which a number were Category A, the most serious level of image. “The judge described a specifically aggravating factor to be the fact that the children were very young, between three and eight years old and their obvious vulnerability. “It is also apparent from the remarks of the sentencing judge that [Devlin] had been accessing the material over a lengthy period of time, between 2014 – 2017.”