December 2003

Computer salesman admits child pornography charges

A COMPUTER salesman who had an obsession with child pornography has been spared jail, but warned he must seek help for his obsession.

Paul Macadie, 32, was placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years 

Police raided his parents’ home on Teesside and found 2,783 indecent and abusive images of children on his computer and on disk.

Shaun Dodds, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court how experts examined the computer and discovered he had used explicit US websites.

During a police interview, Macadie admitted making three transactions with a US company over the Internet, but said he did not realise he would get access to pictures of children.

In a third interview, he was more forthcoming said Mr Dodds, and told investigators he started downloading images in 1999 and was addicted to Internet pornography.

Macadie disputed the ages of the girls in some of the photographs, but said: “I have been interested in their bodies.”

His barrister, Christopher Knox, said many of the images were at the low end of a scale established in similar cases, and he had made no attempt to distribute them or become part of a paedophile ring.

Mr Knox said: “This puts him in a different category to many of those Your Honour would have to deal with.

“First of all, he does acknowledge he has a problem and it is really quite clearly defined.

“He has accepted that there is a certain material in relation to girls aged between 13 and 16 which he does find attractive, but not the much more unpleasant material.

“It paints a very sad picture of a man of some considerable ability, aged 32, who finds himself in this situation.

“There is not any suggestion that he is dangerous.”

Judge Guy Whitburn put Macadie on a three-year community rehabilitation order, which includes a condition that he attends a sex offenders’ group work programme.

Macadie, of Auckland Way, Stockton, who admitted 11 specimen charges of making indecent images of children and six specimen counts of possessing indecent photographs between March 1999 and November last year, was warned he would be jailed for nine months if he failed to attend the meetings.