Gainsborough pervert downloaded child abuse images while awaiting sentence for similar offences
A convicted Gainsborough sex offender who downloaded indecent images of children while waiting to be sentenced for similar offending has been jailed for three years.
Andrew Callow received a 15 month suspended prison sentence for possessing indecent images in January last year and was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order which included the installation of monitoring software on his devices.
Katie Attenborough, prosecuting, told Nottingham Crown Court the software detected his involvement in sexualised conversations about children and police seized his mobile phone on April 25.
It contained 223 category A images of children, 90 category B images, and 87 category C images, featuring children as young as one and up to eight years old.
The material was accessed in the weeks prior to his sentencing in January, she said, and in September this cycle repeated itself when the software raised further concerns.
This time his phone contained 73 category A images, 20 category B images and 27 category C images, along with one prohibited image.
His barrister, Lauren Butts, said Callow’s greatest mitigation was his early guilty plea and he is “ashamed and disgusted with himself.”
“He knows he has a drinking problem and it is slippery slope to accessing this material,” she said.
“He has elderly parents who know nothing of this. He has managed to hide this. It causes him great pain and distress. This will be his first taste of custody. He is somewhat scared by what lies ahead.”
"You are an isolated individual who spends a great deal of his time drinking,” Judge Michael Auty KC told him on Thursday.
“Category A images are the most serious. In your case they involve the penetrative sexual abuse of children as young as one year old.
"That anyone should derive any pleasure from looking at imagery like that strikes at the core of every right-minded individual.
"You were given a chance and therefore I have no alternative available to me than to send you to prison.
"I do it as an act of necessity to you, and anyone else who is contemplating behaving like you, to emphasize how seriously these offences are taken.”
Callow, aged 57, of Trinity View, Gainsborough, admitted making indecent images of children when he appeared at Lincoln Magistrates Court in October and March.