Portsmouth vet who downloaded 51 child abuse images fails in bid to restore career he 'loves'

Simon Wood was fined £1,000 and ordered to complete a sex offender treatment programme at Portsmouth Crown Court for downloading 51 images.

Wood, 29, previously of North Street, Emsworth, had claimed at the time he was struggling with poor mental health and looked at them as a form of ‘self-harm,’ a previous disciplinary tribunal in 2018 said.

But a bid by Wood last month to restore his career has been rejected by a tribunal of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.

The latest committee ruled the facts of the charges and his ‘underlying criminal behaviour were too serious’ for Wood to be restored to the register.

The videos and still images ‘contained extremely disturbing and seriously abusive images of children’ as young as three. They were found on his personal laptop.

Wood was said to be ‘passionate’ about veterinary medicine and ‘it was part of his identity’.

He was working at Harbour Veterinary Hospital, in London Road, North End, at the time of the criminal charges. He downloaded the images between September 25, 2016, and May 12, 2017.

Wood has to sign the sex offenders’ register until January 2023, when a sexual harm prevention order and disclosure and barring also runs out.

In its ruling, the tribunal said: ‘The committee accepted that Mr Wood had made significant efforts to rehabilitate himself but it was not persuaded that he was fit to be restored to the register because ancillary orders relating to the underlying criminal offences remained in force.

‘The committee noted that at the time those orders were made Mr Wood was described as having an addiction and although the committee accepted that there was a low risk of future reoffending, it decided that because the orders were still in place for public protection reasons, Mr Wood was not fit to be restored to the register.’

Wood had previously shown an ‘extremely low risk of reoffending’. He received a three-year community order.

Since being sentenced he was handed a caution for not re-registering his address with police in a ‘technical breach’ of the sex offenders’ register.

He downloaded the images to ‘punish himself mentally,’ the first tribunal was told.

Wood’s lawyer said he showed his ‘profound remorse,’ has addressed the root cause of his offending, and is ‘more than competent to return to the profession and vocation he loves’.

When he was sentenced at Portsmouth Crown Court in January 2018, judge William Ashworth said: ‘It has to be remembered that that happened in a room somewhere.

‘One does not know where the children's parents were or what experience the children would have been through and how that would have utterly dismantled the rest of their lives.

‘One hopes that they will be able to recover from abuse like that. It is therefore never simply a question of viewing these images.

‘It is a trade that is persisted in which leaves these children to be isolated and subjected to these horrendous invasions.’

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