A SEX offender who placed videos of himself abusing a teenager on the internet has been jailed for seven years.
John Alexander Stuart Black, 48, had more than 41,698 photographs and 989 videos of child pornography on his computer, Stephanie Hancock, prosecuting, told York Crown Court. The scenes were described as “dreadful material” by the Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, who said Black lived a double life for years.
By day he was an ordinary working man, but at night he spent hour after hour on the internet, pursuing his “obsessive interest” in child pornography and sharing it with people around the world.
The teenager had no idea of the existence of two films lasting a total of nearly 11 minutes of Black abusing him until, years after the abuse ended, police found them in the child porn cache, and told him about them – and what Black had done with them.
Detective Constable Alan Williams, of York CID, said Black’s crimes covered more than ten years and said: “His obsession with collecting and sharing images and videos of child abuse led him into carrying out such abuse himself.
“I am pleased that the opportunity to commit such evil acts has been taken away from him and will not be able to harm, anyone else for the foreseeable future.”
Black pleaded guilty to six child sex offences, one of getting a child to watch porn, six offences connected with making and distributing his home-made child porn, 15 of distributing child porn, ten of downloading child porn and one of possessing child porn, and asked for others to be taken into consideration.
In addition to the seven-year sentence, he was put on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life and given a Sexual Offences Protection Order which will restrict his behaviour after his release.
Miss Hancock said police found the child porn when they raided Black’s Tadcaster home on February 19 and confiscated his two computers and external data storage devises. The photographs and videos included a “significant” amount classified Level 4 and 5 on the Copine scale, the hard-core levels.
After reading “graphic” descriptions of the porn, the judge said it was “quite dreadful material” and commended Det Con Williams, Det Con Vincent Morris and police investigator Ian Meek who had to view all the child porn and search through more than a million computer files to find it.
“It is, I am quite sure, unpleasant and potentially very disturbing work they had to perform,” he said.
For Black, Andrew Semple said his client was a “lonely, perhaps pathetic man” who had no sexual experience.
The court was told Black had not groomed the teenager or used drugs, alcohol or threats in the abuse. The court also heard Black was so disgusted and remorseful for his actions he had tried to take his own life on more than one occasion.
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