A PERVERTED Rugby man has escaped being jailed after viewing child pornography involving girls as young as three.
Adrian Hughes was asked to think how he would feel if he had come across an image of his own child being abused.
He had pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to three charges of making indecent images of children which included young girls being subjected to penetrative sex acts.
The 48-year-old of Grasmere Close was given a three-year community order with a condition that he takes part in a sex offender programme and a rehabilitation activity.
He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for five years, and was fined £400 and ordered to pay £300 costs.
Prosecutor John Evans said in April last year the police went to Hughes’s home following indications that he had been accessing child pornography online.
He was arrested and officers seized his computer and a hard drive on which they found a total of 101 indecent images of children.
Delroy Henry, defending, said Hughes, who has an alcohol problem he was addressing, had also been engaging with the Lucy Faithful Foundation, which works with sex offenders.
Recorder Dean Kershaw told Hughes: “You are someone who was deliberately going onto two computers or devices and searching for material for your own sexual gratification.
“What you did is access many, many images of young girls and boys who are being abused.
“All you would have had to think about is, if you were on your computer and you saw an image of your son being abused by an adult male, how that would make you feel.
“And if you have not thought of it like that before, then you ought to. It was absolutely disgraceful conduct.”
Recorder Kershaw explained that, under the guidelines, if he jailed Hughes, it would only be for a short period, and that ‘society was better protected’ by a community order combined with the sex offender programme.
He added: “Without people like you watching these images, these things wouldn’t be produced. You need to understand just how sickening these images are, and how sickening your conduct was.
“You have to understand this is not curiosity, it’s perversion. What you need to do is to address that.”
