A PERVERT from Warwick who viewed child abuse on his computer has escaped being jailed.
But Shawn Perks finally admitted responsibility, and pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to three charges of making indecent images of children.
The 28-year-old, of Humphris Street, Warwick, was sentenced to nine months in prison suspended for two years and ordered to take part in a sex offenders’ programme and a rehabilitation activity.
Judge Andrew Lockhart QC, also ordered him to register as a sex offender for ten years and to pay £250 costs.
Prosecutor Simon Burch said in November 2015 the police went to Perks’s home where they seized a laptop computer and an external hard drive.
In the ‘unallocated space’ on the hard drive they found a total of 325 indecent images of children, while the laptop had a program for anonymous browsing on it.
But Perks had been using search terms which indicated an interest in sexual activity involving under-age children including ‘pre-teen’ and incest.
Mr Burch said Perks had originally denied the charges, and two computer experts had to be instructed, one for the defence and one for the prosecution, before issues over the computer were resolved and he changed his pleas on the day of his trial last month.
Andrew Tucker, defending, pointed out that the images seemed to have been accessed over a short period of about eight days, and had been deleted and were inaccessible to Perks.
“He is a vulnerable man. This behaviour seems to have occurred at a time when he was at a pretty low ebb emotionally and personally, and has not been repeated.
Sentencing Perks, Judge Lockhart told him: “Each time an image like that is viewed by someone like you that abuse of that child who has been raped continues. Those images remain on the internet for a very long time while those children grow into adults.”
