December 2007

Mix-up exposed child porn crime

A MIX-UP at a computer repair centre led to a child porn shock for an innocent family and the threat of prison for a pervert.

Colin Welburn, 49, of Marske, was given a suspended jail sentence for downloading video clips of young girls being abused.

He was warned by a judge that he will be locked up if he gets into any more trouble during the next two years.

Welburn’s pornography shame was exposed after he sent his computer to a firm in West Yorkshire when it would not work properly.

At about the same time, a family from Doncaster returned their computer when they encountered problems.

But a mix-up between the names – the Collins family, and Welburn’s forename – led to the machines being sent to the wrong addresses.

John and Adelle Collins had bought the computer as a Christmas present several months earlier for their 15-year-old son, Daniel.

When they received Welburn’s computer by mistake in January, they were stunned by what they found on it, prosecutor Shaun Dodds told Teesside Crown Court.

The family contacted the police, and Mr Collins later told officers that he felt physically sick when he saw the images Welburn had downloaded.

Welburn was arrested in August and admitted searching child pornography websites and creating obscene mini-movies of girls – some as young as two.

He was yesterday given a four-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, with two years of probation service supervision, and ordered to go on an internet sex offenders’ treatment programme.

Judge John Walford also banned Welburn from working with children for life, and ordered him to sign on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.

Welburn, of Ronaldshay Terrace, Marske, who works for steel company Corus, admitted four charges of making indecent images of children.

His barrister Duncan McReddie told the court that Welburn had been honest with the police after his arrest and “did not advance any improbable or outrageous explanation” about the images being on his computer.