Man downloaded videos of children as young as three being sexually abused, court told

Stephen Wallhead was caught out after police raided his home in Boston and seized his computer hard drive.

Phil Howes, prosecuting, said “These offences came to light following information received by the police which led officers to visit his home address.”

Mr Howes said that when police arrived at Wallhead’s home they arrested the defendant who told them: “I’ve seen some images but I’ve deleted them.”

Officers took away a number of items including the hard drive. When that was checked it was discovered that Wallhead had used a peer-to-peer file sharing site to download seven videos of children being abused.

The videos, which in total ran for 25 minutes, were all in the most serious category showing children aged between three and six years old being sexually assaulted by adult men.

Wallhead, 35, of Clifton Road, Boston, admitted a single charge of making seven indecent photographs of children between 6 and 10 April 2019.

Sunil Khanna, in mitigation, said that Wallhead has no previous convictions and admitted the offence.

“He said that he was searching for wallpaper for his computer background and was told that peer-to-peer sites were where he should look.

“These images were downloaded onto his computer. He did preview one and saw that it contained child images and allowed it to download. He did not deliberately look for them but having found them he did not stop them from downloading.”

Wallhead was given an eight month jail sentence suspended for two years with up to 35 rehabilitation activity requirement days when he appeared on Friday. He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register and given a five year sexual harm prevention order.

Recorder Jacob Hallam QC told him “People who download such material and then look at it are by their actions helping continue the appalling abuse of children. All of these videos feature acts of utter, terrible degradation of young children by adults.

“There is no doubt that you obtained these images over a short period of time. You are a man in your mid 30s who has never been in trouble before. I can deal with this as an isolated incident committed over a short period of time.”