September 2011

Paedophile escapes jail

A father of three girls age 10 or under caught downloading almost 4,000 images of child pornography has escaped jail after claiming he was impotent.

Kerry Trubee, 61, Fisher Close, Croydon, appeared at Croydon Crown Court on September 16, after he pleaded guilty to 16 counts of possession of indecent images.

Trubee, who was discovered to have viewed 3,877 images of girls aged between four and ten, was handed a three-year supervision order, is required to attend a sex offender group programme during this time, must sign the sex offenders register and must inform the police of his address at all times.

Sentencing, Judge Warwick McKinnon, said: “I could send you down today but it is my judgement that would be disproportionate in the circumstances.”

The court heard how Trubee began downloading pictures at the family home in Famet Avenue, Purley, after becoming concerned one of his daughters may have been a victim of a sexual predator.

In total he viewed 2,896 level one, 282 level two, 287 level three 394, level four and 18 level five images.

Prosecuting Shekinah Anson said Trubee had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which saw the habit escalate.

She said: “He told police there was no sexual gratification from these images and he was in fact impotent.”

Defending Andrew Hope told the court Trubee suffered from heart problems and diabetes and following the seizure of his home computers on April 4 this year he became so ill he signed into a psychiatric ward.

He added none of the images were saved onto the five seized computers.

He said: “In the majority of cases such as these images are downloaded and saved and catalogued. None of the images recovered from the defendant’s computer were saved.”

As an example of Trubee’s OCD Mr Hope added he had complied a collection of thousands of war history books, yet had read only a fifth, but he was seeing a counsellor to help him.

Judge McKinnon said: “There is a real problem here that you have, that is obvious and you have finally admitted it.”