Portsmouth dad caught with paedophile manual and 400 abuse images spared jail

David Woods, 50, had used the dark web to locate pictures of girls aged nine to 13 claiming he did so as he was ‘depressed’.

The dad-of-one, of Drayton Road, North End, had previously belonged to an online group of ‘people who had those feelings towards children but did not want to act on them’.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard officers monitoring peer-to-peer file-sharing networks traced Woods and raided his home.

He confessed to looking at the images as recently as a couple of days before the raid, prosecutor Janice Brennan said.

He would ‘start to watch a little bit, relieve the stress and then delete,’ she said.

Some 104 child abuse images were found - with these classed as category A, the worst. Another 53 at B and 235 at C were found split between his laptop and computer.

Woods had installed sophisticated file deletion software on his computer, and used a browser that did not save images.

‘To his credit he accepted full responsibility and did not evade anything that was put to him,’ said Ms Brennan of his second police interview.

Woods had 11 pages of a ‘paedophile manual’ on his Samsung laptop.

Recorder Paul Garlick QC imposed an eight-month jail sentence suspended for two years.

Woods must complete 60 hours’ unpaid work with 40 days’ rehabilitation activities.

He admitted three charges of making indecent images, and possessing a paedophile manual.

Woods must sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. An order was made restricting his internet use indefinitely.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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