By Kelly Eve

Last updated 09:47, Saturday, 27 September 2008

Library staff in Carlisle who caught a pervert looking at child porn have been praised for their vigilance.

Reassured public: Jim Grisenthwaite

Staff contacted police after they spotted Mark Bowness viewing hundreds of images on computers in the Lanes library.

Last week 38-year-old Bowness, who used to live at Ellesmere Way in Morton, was jailed at the city’s crown court.

Now Jim Grisenthwaite, head of culture at Cumbria County Council, has praised workers at the city centre library.

Mr Grisenthwaite has also moved to reassure members of the public that it is impossible for anyone to access pornography directly from the library service’s computers.

He said: “The man took his own images on his own floppy disk into the library to view them.

“All our computers have been set up with stringent filtering, which is based essentially on the filtering used by schools, and which prohibits the downloading of anything unlawful.

“Also, even if a person does load something up onto a library PC, it ‘clears down’ when that person logs off, so there is no way the next user will be able to access it.”

Praising librarians, he added: “I would also like to commend the vigilance of the staff at Carlisle library. If it weren’t for them, this man might have been viewing images elsewhere even now.

“We take pride in our libraries being able to provide a non-threatening environment to all sections of the community, but we do have rules and regulations and we will not tolerate anti-social or illegal activity of any sort – the users of our libraries can be assured of that.”

Bowness, who had kept a diary of his fantasies about having sex with children, was jailed for a total of 30 months.

He was also made the subject of a sex offences prevention order for the next 10 years in a bid to keep him away from children.

He was arrested by police after he tried to chat up a 10-year-old boy on a bus before touching his arm. He was also caught viewing hundreds of images at the library.

Bowness admitted one count of common assault and another of committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual assault.

He also admitting 21 counts of possessing child pornography, including images of children engaging in sexual activity.

The court heard he also had numerous previous convictions for indecent exposure and another of outraging public decency dating back to last year.

Carlisle Crown Court was told that police attended Carlisle Library on January 7 after Bowness was spotted viewing child porn images.

They found 18 floppy discs which contained a total of 375 images. Some depicted children engaging in sexual activity.