November 2019

Sex offender had images of babies being abused

A sex offender with thousands of indecent videos and pictures of babies and children has been jailed.

Among the videos found by police at Ian Grigg’s home was a video of a baby girl aged under four months being sexually abused prosecutor Matthew Collins, said.

The 56-year-old man also had a video of a pre-school child being sexually abused.

In total he had more than 4,000 illegal pictures and videos, York Crown Court heard.

Recorder Margia Mostafa told Grigg: “In order for you to satisfy your urges by watching them, a child somewhere has been abused.

There must be a huge number of victims in this particular case,” she added. “I cannot ignore that.”

Grigg, of Meadow View, Sherburn-in-Elmet, pleaded guilty to three charges of having indecent images of children and one of having extreme pornography and was jailed for 16 months.

He was also put on the sex offenders’ register and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order.

For him, Eddison Flint said Grigg had himself suffered sexual abuse when he was younger and he felt this had had an “extreme impact upon his perception of sexual desires”.

Mr Collins said police executed a search warrant at Grigg’s house in May 2018 after his activities on the “dark net” sparked a police alert.

He admitted downloading indecent images in August 2017.

On his computer equipment and storage items, detectives found 147 videos and 173 pictures of the worst kind of abuse, 31 video and 3,588 pictures of the least serious form of abuse and 190 videos and 308 images in the middle category of abuse.

The majority were of girls aged between five and 14.