Pervert, 69, jailed for videoing young girls in 'provocative poses' in Hampshire woods

Portsmouth Crown Court heard that Mark Blackwell, 69, preyed on the children - aged about 10 - for seven years in the 1990s.

When Blackwell was arrested in mid-January in 2018 police seized his devices and found the videos still in existence.

He was already on the sex offenders’ register and under an order restricting his internet access after admitting 24 charges relating to indecent images in 2011.

When officers went back to his home on January 31 - around two weeks after his arrest - they found a perverted search terms and an image of a naked child with cartoon face on a new laptop.

Richard Onslow, mitigating, said Blackwell claimed to have ‘strayed off the path’.

But judge Timothy Mousley QC did not brush off the crimes as easily as the defendant had tried to portray them.

Jailing Blackwell for four years and four months, he said: ‘You are a man with a number of previous convictions for this kind of behaviour and the images have been retained for a long period.’

Nicola Hadley, prosecuting, said: ‘They were asked to go out into the woods, videoed in provocative poses and sometimes with clothes on, sometimes with clothes off.’

The woods were in Hampshire. Some 76 indecent images also featured close ups of a girl’s genitalia and body, the court heard.

Blackwell, who uses a wheelchair and is in ‘deteriorating health’, was cleared of charges accusing him of assaulting the two girls. He denied taking the images.

The prosecutor added Blackwell had been fined in 1972 after being convicted of assaulting a girl under 14.

Mr Onslow said Blackwell insisted he had ‘taken the images without any sexual intent’.

Blackwell must sign the sex offenders’ register for life. A sexual harm prevention order restricts his internet use for life. He was convicted of six indecent image charges.