A 60-year-old man claims he ‘accidentally’ saved hundreds of child abuse images to his computer.
Salisbury Magistrates’ Court yesterday (Friday 31 March) heard that ‘inquisitive’ Ian Dodson had accessed the dark web after reading about it in the news.
He pleaded guilty to making (downloading) 190 indecent photographs and videos of children in Category A – depicting the most severe sexual abuse.
He also admitted being in possession of 274 photographs and videos of children in Category B and another 193 in Category C.
Prosecutor Asha Seenauth said the defendant, of St Jude’s Close in Bishopdown, Salisbury, was arrested after police were told that his IP address was flagged for accessing the vile content online.
Officers attended his home and seized numerous devices – with the illicit collection found across two hard drives and an Acer computer tower.
In a custody interview, Dodson said he had read in the news that child abuse images could be found on the dark web and because he was ‘inquisitive’, he wanted to investigate whether the images were actually there. But claims he did not download any.
He said he had seen images, but did not get sexual gratification from them and purely stumbled upon them as he browsed the dark web. He denied being attracted to children throughout.
Marcus Sears, defending, asked the court to consider keeping the case at the magsitrates’ court for sentence – despite the starting point being more than six months’ imprisonment.
He said his client had fully cooperated with the police and this offending has only arisen out of “opened the door [to the dark web] not knowing what would come out of it”.
Mr Sears added that the case has been “hanging over this man and his family” for nearly three years now, suggesting “that is a sentence all on its own”. He said that Dodson’s wife of 25 years has also been affected.
He reiterated that the defendant maintains that he did not go searching for the type of content that’s been read out to the court”, but “admits accessing the dark web and admits that the images were on his computer”.
The chair of the bench told Dodson that he “does not accept” that several hundred images were downloaded to his computer accidentally or unintentionally – telling the defendant that he has “significantly downplayed” his crime, despite his admissions.
The case was sent to Salisbury Crown Court for sentence on 26 May. He was released on unconditional bail. He must register as a sex offender within 72 hours.
