Businessman sought help for child porn 'fixation'

Officers searched the home of John Taylor on September 12 last year seizing two laptops, a month after the website in Croatia "was compromised", Leeds Crown Court heard yesterday.

That site was found to have had 12 million hits, with more than 44,000 IP addresses (the labels that act like a phone numbers for the internet) from 170 countries worldwide logged.

Taylor was arrested and interviewed in March this year after examination of his laptops showed indecent images and movies involving children aged three to 13 had been downloaded by him.

He told officers about five years ago he began with adult pornography while his wife was working away, but then decided to download more extreme material to shock himself.

He said he downloaded images of bestiality and then progressed to images of children.

Prosecuting, Mehran Nassiri said Taylor maintained he could not stop himself doing it and wanted to do something about his behaviour.

He said he searched for things under words such as "young" and "incest" and would view the images found then delete them.

He told officers he had no interest in the children themselves just in the impact to shock himself.

He said he was disgusted by his behaviour and that his wife had not been aware of what he was doing. He had never visited the site concerned but had visited links to it but not in the three months before his arrest.

The court heard he had visited a psychologist on three occasions and was motivated to change, accepting he needed help.

Taylor, 55 of Thornes Road, Wakefield who was said to earn 35,000 a year, admitted six charges, two relating to Level 4 movies, one a level three image and two level one images on a scale of seriousness up to five.

The final charge covered 51 images at level four, one level one movie, one at level two, one at level three and 12 movies at level four.

He was given a community order for three years with supervision and a condition of attending a special programme for internet sexual offenders. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for seven years and pay costs of 725.

Sentencing, Judge Kerry Macgill said it was sad to see a man of his years in the court on such "disgusting charges".