David Thompson Jailed for Huge Child Porn Collection

A FORMER car park attendant has been jailed for four- and-a-half years after admitting to possessing and distributing nearly 90,000 child porn images.

Some of the images found at David Thompson's address included pictures of children only a few days or weeks old.

Judge Jonathan Haworth, sentencing Thompson at Cambridge Crown Court, said the case was one of the worst he had ever come across.

Thompson was caught with 89,187 indecent photographs. Almost 8,000 of those showed images at the highest levels - four and five.

The 29-year-old also performed around 500 internet "trades" of them via internet chat rooms and twice arranged to meet with people offering to give him access to children.

Bailed while police put his computer equipment through forensic examination, Thompson, who was living in a caravan at Lime Kiln Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, moved in with his pensioner mother in Church Way, Hauxton - and used her computer to carry on his illicit trade.

In addition to the thousands of images, 455 movie clips were also discovered. Almost 300 of these were assessed as among the worst type of images.

After a psychiatric report on Thompson revealed there was a fear the "trajectory of his offending" would lead him to physically abusing a child, Judge Haworth placed an extended supervision sentence on him of four years to allow a "programme of suitable treatment to be drawn up" to prevent him reoffending.

He said: "It reached the point where you were communicating with someone called James and it reached the stage where you and he were fantasising about his two daughters and you got as far as making an appointment to meet. In the event, you didn't go, but it shows how close to the cusp you came.

"The number of images was huge and dealing only with levels three, four and five, over 23,000 images were found."

Talking about Thompson's continued offending while bailed, Judge Haworth said: "It's quite clear that you were in effect quite unable to stop yourself continuing that activity."

Thompson was told he would serve at least half of his four-and-a-half year custodial sentence in jail, less the 260 days he has already served.

Judge Haworth also ordered a sexual offences prevention order placed on Thompson with conditions including a complete bar for life from working with children and agreement to comply with police searches.

Detective Constable Tony Cox, the police officer who was involved in investigating the crimes, praised the judge's sentence and said he thought it was a fair judgement which protected the public.

He said: "I hope this sends the message that while people think they are anonymous on the internet we are actively looking for people doing this."

Cambridge News