An “arrogant” pensioner has gone to jail still protesting his innocence despite his conviction by a jury of downloading “disgraceful” videos of child sex abuse.
Police paid a visit to the home of Leslie King, 75, after information received by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP), Hull Crown Court heard.
Officers seized his computer in a search of the property in St Helena Gardens, west Hull, where King lived alone, which revealed he had installed a programme capable of removing files beyond even the reach of forensic software.
But police still found two indecent videos which had been deleted, in category A – the ranking for the most serious form of child abuse – and another in category B.
John Batchelor, prosecuting, said the category A movie lasted a minute and 37 seconds and was of a man abusing a girl aged about 13. The category B movie was 13 minutes long and featured a man and a girl aged eight or nine.
The videos had been downloaded between August 2016 and April 2017. There was also evidence of “very graphic” search terms King had used.
When King was interviewed, “he maintained somebody else must have entered his property and downloaded the images”. But he refused to name who it could be and said none of his friends “would be the types to access such material”.
Jailing King would “not be the best use of limited public resources”, Mr Brook said, suggesting he “could be effectively managed in the community”.
“How can that happen?” asked Judge Bury. “He is totally of the view that he’s been the subject of a miscarriage of justice. There’s no prospect of any rehabilitation. He doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong.”
The judge jailed King for three months and made him subject to a sexual harm prevention order for seven years. He must register as a sex offender for the same period.
The judge also gave King four months to contact the police to finance and arrange the retrieval of personal information from his computer, arrangements which must be “to the satisfaction of the police”.
