By Former army medic caught with ‘horrific’ indecent images of children
A former army medic was caught with ‘horrific’ indecent images of children for the second time in five years.
Neil Smith, of Merlin Road, Scunthorpe was jailed for two years at Grimsby Crown Court after admitting making indecent images of children.
This included videos of rape of two and four year olds.
The prosecution said there were over 400 images and videos which were found by police after his personal account was traced by investigators.
The court heard how the 53-year-old was convicted of possessing indecent images in 2015 when he received a three-year community order and was on a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for five years.
The latest offences were committed between November 2019 and September 2020.
Smith voluntarily presented himself at a police station at a later date after police raided the home and seized his laptop while he was out.
Expert investigators found use of a sharing network and analysed Smith’s search history, revealing key words, “rape,” “incest,” and “pre-teen hardcore.”
After sentencing Smith to two years in prison Judge David Tremberg highlighted the horrific nature of the offences.
He said: “You received a golden opportunity from the court. Rather than locking you up straight away, the court gave you an opportunity to put all this behind you with supervision and unpaid work.”
The judge added: “That would have given you an opportunity and to see if it was not part of an entrenched pattern.
“You well knew that if you got caught again, you would be locked up.
“None of that was enough to deter you and so it was in the autumn of 2020 you got caught once again by the police.
“The quantity of the images you acquired is large. They are grossly offensive images that you viewed for you own sexual gratification and included toddlers being raped. These images depict children being sexually abused. They can never recover their innocence. They have had that stolen from them.”
Judge Tremberg ordered a Sexual Harm Prevention Order to last 15 years, prohibiting the use of encryption on any device and to ensure the search history of any device is available for inspection to any police or monitoring officer.
Smith must also register as a sex offender on his release for the subsequent 10 years, which requires him to give police details of his address.
