Sacked hospital doctor spared jail sentence over 1,700 child porn images

Giancarlo Esposito, 32, pleaded guilty to 21 counts of making indecent photos of children.

Leeds Crown Court heard that in September last year police raided his then home in Beechwood Road, Bradford, while investigating users of a service provider in Luxembourg.

After seizing his computer, DVDs and memory sticks, they found more than 1,700 images and movies containing child pornography, ranging from level five – the most graphic – to level one. Most were level one images.

Prosecutor Richard Smith said that when interviewed Esposito admitted downloading a “block” of images, but said he had not looked at them all.

He confessed that he had been looking at child pornography since his early 20s.

The court was told that Esposito, a former senior registrar at St James’ Hospital working in acute medicine, was on the verge of becoming a consultant. After the charges came to light, he was suspended, and formally dismissed in April this year.

Mitigating, Robert Dudley said Esposito had “at the very outset made immediate admissions about his access to the images”.

He said the matter had already had a “significant effect” on Esposito, adding: “He was not only suspended from the hospital, he
is also subject to a GMC suspension.

“He will be struck off, and that is the end of his medical career.”

Judge Penelope Belcher told Esposito there was a “complete contradiction” in his caring professional persona and “what was going on in private”.

“I find it alarming that someone who has taken the Hippocratic Oath should be involved in offending of this sort,” she said. “It is because people like you are willing to look at these images [that] these children are abused on an international scale.”

Esposito was put on a 36-month supervision order, and must go on a 60-day rehabilitation programme for internet sex offenders. He is also banned from working with children, and from owning any computer or internet-ready phone without telling police.

He was ordered to pay £1,200 costs and sign the Sex Offenders’ Register and was handed a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.