Child porn dad spared jail; why no penalty for father with 3,000 images, some of BABIES? (United Kingdom)

Classic coddling. Dad is identified as PETER CLARKE. No mention here as to whether his kids were involved or what his custodial relationship to them is.

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/13715657.Dad_of_two_had_almost_3_000____grotesque____child_abuse_images/

Dad-of-two had almost 3,000 ‘grotesque’ child abuse images

Sentencing: Judge Ian Pringle Sentencing: Judge Ian Pringle

The Oxford Times: Joe Gammie, Reporter / Monday 14 September 2015 / News

A FATHER-OF-TWO caught with a “grotesque” collection of indecent images of children on his computer was spared jail.

Police swooped on Peter Clarke’s home in January after tracing a file uploaded from his computer to the file-sharing program Dropbox.

Officers seized the 42-year-old’s laptop and found nearly 3,000 indecent images of children on it, a court heard.

Prosecutor Julian Lynch said that 594 of the files were of the most severe category, including images and videos of babies as young as 18 months old being involved in sexual acts.

Mr Lynch told Oxford Crown Court on Thursday that when first questioned about the images Clarke told police he was trying to understand sexual abuse but in a second interview admitted that the images were for his own sexual gratification.

Clarke, of Van Diemans, in Stanford in the Vale, admitted three counts of making indecent images of children between November 2010 and August last year when he appeared at Oxford Magistrates’ Court last month.

Lucy Ffrench, defending, said Clarke had been exposed to pornography from a young age and hated himself for what he had done.

She added: “He is mortified to be here today. He accepts the harm he has indirectly caused to the childwren involved.

“He has stopped his use of pornography and accepts that he needs to completely withdraw from that material forever .”

Judge Ian Pringle said it was staggering that a father had downloaded the “appalling” images of children being “grotesquely abused”.

But Judge Pringle said that because of Clarke’s guilty pleas and the fact he had made frank confessions when interviewed he could suspend a prison sentence.

He added: “Where there is sufficient prospect of rehabilitation it is right that the court take it.

“For those reasons I am going to take the exceptional course of making the sentence of 14 months suspended for two years .”

He gave Clarke a two-year supervision order and ordered him to undergo a 36-session sexual offender treatment programme.

Judge Pringle also imposed a sexual harm prevention order and Clarke will have to sign the sexual offenders’ register for 10 years.