By James Johnson

Last updated at 11:46, Friday, 02 November 2012

A man who downloaded and stored videos and more than 1,500 indecent images of child and animal pornographyfeaturing “real exploitation of the grossest form” has been sent to prison.

Samuel William Clark, 25, of Salterbeck Drive, Workington, pleaded guilty to all 26 charges, including three of possessing images of the highest severity and two of possessing extreme pornography videos featuring animals.

On June 25 of this year police executed a search warrant and seized a laptop, computer and mobile phone belonging to Clark, as well as a number of storage disks.

They discovered more than 1,500 images that Clark had downloaded from file sharing programmes and internet searches.

Defence barrister Greg Hoare said that Clark downloaded and viewed the images “because he was getting bored” and that he was not aroused by them.

The images included pornography of severity levels one to five of children under 13, severity levels one to five of children under 16, and several videos.

Sentencing, Judge Paul Batty said told Clark: “The material featured exploitation of children, some under the age of five.

“It was real exploitation of the grossest form.

“Unusually, you had gone to the trouble of downloading a considerable amount of it onto disks and that is an added aspect.

“The fact that you were in possession of extreme pornography, the likes of which many people will never have viewed, means I am unable to suspend the prison sentence.”

Clark was sentenced to 12 months in prison, given a sexual prevention order for an indefinite term to prevent him having access to the internet, prohibited from having unsupervised contact with anyone under 16, disqualified from working with children and put on the sex offenders register for 10 years.

First published at 11:35, Friday, 02 November 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk