Leeds musician jailed over child abuse images

Guitarist Howard Ellis, 60, was arrested by West Yorkshire Police officers when his ship came into port at Southampton after they discovered he had been accessing the illegal images from his home in Leeds.

Leeds Crown Court heard Ellis has two previous convictions for downloading abusive images of children dating back to 2010.

Ellis, of Priest Thorpe Lane, Farsley, Leeds, was jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty to 11 offences of making indecent images of children.

Alisha Kaye, prosecuting, said West Yorkshire officers received information that illegal images had been accessed from an internet provider address linked to Ellis’s then home in Kippax.

Miss Kaye said Ellis was a musician on a cruise liner and was away at the time the offences came to light.

Officers went to the south coast to arrest Ellis as he returned from working on board the Mediterranean cruise.

Three lap top computers, four hard drives and a mobile phone was seized and found to contain 625 images and movies of children being sexually abused.

Three of the movies were at level A - the most serious category of offending. Some of the images featured children as young as seven being abused.

Ellis was interviewed about the images and admitted responsibility for the offences. He said he was the sole owner of the devices that had been seized and no one else had access to the images.

Ellis admitted similar offences in January and March of 2010. At that time he was made the subject of a community order and a sexual offences prevention order.

Kama Melly, mitigating, described Ellis as “a lonely and desperate man.”

She said Ellis was anxious to receive treatment to address his offending.

Miss Melly said Ellis had lost his job and home as a result of the convictions and was now living in a caravan.

Jailing Ellis, Judge James Spencer, QC, said: “You are 60 years of age and you have been in trouble twice before for having images of children which were indecent and now you have been found downloading them again.”