WHEN police raided a Coventry man’s home and seized his computer they were horrified to discover a sickening movie of a baby girl being raped.
And a judge at Warwick Crown Court heard that Ian McCauley had downloaded the video and other images of children being abused via peer-to-peer software.
McCauley (44) of Charminster Drive, Styvechale, Coventry, was jailed for ten months after pleading guilty to three charges of making indecent images of children.
He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for ten years and made subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, placing restrictions on his contact with children and use of the internet for eight years.
Prosecutor Daniel Oscroft said that in July last year West Midlands Police identified a number of indecent videos of children were being distributed using peer-to-peer software.
“A trace was undertaken to establish where they were coming from and going to, and an IP address was identified as being leased to Sky and then to the defendant’s address, where he was the sole occupier.”
So in October a warrant was executed at McCauley’s home, and he was arrested and his computer seized.
On it officers found 45 category A movies, defined as showing children being subjected to penetrative sex acts.
The movies on McCauley’s computer mainly showed children ranging from infants up to the age of 11 or 12.
But ‘the most shocking of them’ showed a baby girl aged between 10 and 18 months being digitally penetrated and then raped by an adult male while she was visibly in pain and crying.
Mr Oscroft said there were also seven category B images showing children being subjected to non-penetrative sex acts, and 87 category C images of children in naked or indecent poses.
When McCauley was interviewed he made full admissions.
His barrister Amrisha Parathalingham said: “On his own admission to the probation service, he says he began to develop an interest some ten years or so ago.”
Agreeing with Judge Richard Griffith-Jones that it was ‘a very bad case,’ she conceded: “The demand for such filth grows when people like the defendant view it.
“He is very aware a lengthy term of custody is likely to be at the forefront of Your Honour’s mind.”
But Miss Parathalingham continued: “He has presented as an isolated individual who lacks any sort of support network from friends.”
She suggested the judge could take ‘an exceptional course’ and impose a three-year community order.
But she said there was the additional problem of McCauley having been evicted from his council home because of arrears after he was remanded in custody following a failure to turn up for a previous hearing.
Jailing McCauley, Judge Griffith-Jones told him: “One of the imperatives a court has to consider is the need to reduce the prospect that you will offend again, and that faulty and perverse perspectives can be challenged and changed.
“Very often a court is able to conclude that a long period of supervision and attention from the probation service can achieve that objective.
“But there are cases, and this is one, where the offence is just so bad that it would be an affront to right-thinking people to do anything other than to pass an immediate custodial sentence.
“In a case where an albeit egregious example of one of the moving images involves a baby being raped, and in obvious pain and discomfort by reason of the rape, it is just so very bad that you have got to go to prison.
“I hope you dwell on the fact that they are real people being abused and hurt and degraded – and that will continue to happen if perverse and weak-minded people like you are prepared to provide a market for it.”
