Barrow rapist sentenced for having indecent photos of children
A convicted rapist was found to have made and distributed dozens of indecent photographs of children, a court heard,
Tony Hulme, of Lesh Lane in Barrow, pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent photographs of a child and four counts of distributing indecent photographs of a child between September 16 2021 and September 29 2022.
Timothy Ashmole, prosecuting the case at Preston Crown Court, told the court that the defendant was found to have been in possession of eight category A images, six category B images and 45 category C images.
The defendant was also found to have distributed one category A image and ten category C images.
Mr Ashmole said the defendant was found with two Motorola mobile phones in his possession where he used a number of chat sites to distribute the images, including the ‘Kik’ and ‘Snapchat’ applications.
In police interview he said that people would send the images to him though he denied getting sexual pleasure from them, the court heard.
The court heard the defendant was jailed for six years in 2015 after he pleaded guilty to a charge of rape.
Sentencing the defendant to a 20-month prison sentence suspended for two years, His Honour Judge Medland said: “This is an unusual case because the number of images are comparatively low. Conventionally, I would see people make images in their thousands.
“You have presented to the author of the pre-sentence report as someone who understands how wrong this sort of offending is and I have been persuaded that work can be done to direct you from similar behaviour in the future.”
The defendant was also made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order for ten years, ordered to undertake 200 hours unpaid work, as well as complete 30 RAR days.
He had already been placed on the sex offenders register indefinitely following the rape offence.
