Vicar Richard Hart Sentenced for Child Porn

A vicar is to be sentenced today after pleading guilty to taking indecent pictures of children and possessing an "Aladdin's Cave of perversion".

The Reverend Richard Hart, who was married with five children, had been a vicar in Powys, mid-Wales, for more than 20 years.

Following a tip-off, police raided his vicarage and found "a really significant volume" of printed indecent images and tens of thousands more on the Reverend's computer.

Along with the images were 270 stories about child rape, both fantasy and biographical, bookmarked for ease of access.

In total, they found 56,832 images spanning the range of severity from what is known as a category one - the least severe - to category five - the most depraved.

The chief investigating officer, Detective Inspector Diane Davies of Dyfed-Powys Police told Sky News: "Mr Hart had the full spectrum of images from category one-five.

"To give you an example, the least serious category, which is still very serious, would be a naked child sexually posed.

"The category five images, well if you imagine the worst, that's where we are - you're talking about really sadistic, sexual images of children."

The find is expected to be described in court later as "an Aladdin's Cave - rich in every manner of perversion".

In police interviews Hart explained that he derived sexual gratification from looking at the most serious of the images.

In addition to the charges of possession, Hart admitted 12 counts of making indecent photographs between 1999 and 2007, and four of taking such images in July 1991 at a hearing on September 3.

Arriving at court without his dog collar, he was remanded into custody and made no application for bail.

His counsel said he was "realistic" about the kind of sentence he might receive and wished his time to start now.

Police began a covert operation to snare Reverend Hart after being notified of concerns that he was linked with sexual images of children.

It was an operation that would cross national and international borders before ending with Hart's arrest at his home at Beguildy on Friday January 11 this year.

Police said he had built up a veneer of respectability and was respected and trusted within the community he was supposed to guide.

By the time he was arrested he had responsibility for five parishes in the area and had been made chairman of the board of governors at the Beguildy village church school, where his wife worked part-time as a primary school assistant.

But that veneer hid the sordid truth: a secret history, decades-deep, of obsession with sexual images of children.

The oldest of the images went back to 1973, pre-dating the Reverend's ordination, his marriage and his children.

It is the sheer scale of this crime, along with its severity that has shocked the community in which he lived.

Sky News visited the vicarage in tiny town of Beguildy, where a clutter of the Reverend's possessions remain after the Hart family moved out.

Boxes of books have been piled in one room and a child's homemade mobile still hangs from the window.

In another, the vicar's desk stands as it was left - neat and ordered, pen to the side of the correspondence still awaiting an answer.

The church will now begin the formal process of de-frocking Reverend Hart.

Technically, he remains "suspended" from his position, but still on full pay.

Once sentence is passed they will hold a disciplinary tribunal to rule on his case and rectify the matter, but the process of rebuilding trust in the church and repairing the damage to their reputation may take much longer.

After Hart's conviction the church issued this statement: "The Church in Wales is deeply saddened and shocked that one of its clerics has been found to have committed very serious offences involving the use of indecent images of children.

"It is of particular concern that these offences should have occurred at a time when he held a responsible and privileged position in one of our church communities.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with those children who may have been directly or indirectly affected and with the wider communities in which they live."

The Church has appointed two counsellors to be available to anyone in the communities who may feel the need of their services.

Sky News