Porter jailed after colleague finds indecent images on phone

Wednesday 24 July 2019

A hotel porter has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, after an investigation discovered he had over 25,000 indecent images of children on a number of electronic devices.

Flean Barbosa, 40, was charged with six counts of creating indecent images of a child or children under the age of 16.

Barbosa was born in South Africa but moved to the island 19 years ago via Madeira. The court heard that the man was a 'loner' with no ties to the island, and condemned his crimes with a series of concurrent sentences for the various charges. 

Appearing in the Royal Court on Tuesday after pleading guilty earlier in the year, the six charges represented samples from across the spectrum of severity from over 25,000 images found on various devices belonging to Barbosa. More than 2,000 of those images were put in the worst category. 

The former porter will be recommended for deportation after he serves his prison time. 

The Court heard on 11 March at around 22:00, the defendant, who was intoxicated at the time, was sitting along with a colleague in their shared accommodation when Barbosa left the room, leaving his phone on the sofa. When a notification sound went off, the colleague, knowing the passcode, decided to look at the phone's contents out of "nosiness."

The witness saw two of the photographs Barbosa was later convicted for possessing. One involved a boy of five-years-old, the other a baby of just six-months; the court heard that the witness then threw the phone onto the ground in disgust. 

After the witness informed the defendant's employer the Police were called and his room searched for other devices. Several devices were found including a laptop, most of which were found to have been used to access indecent images. 

Many images on the laptop were found in the 'saved photos' folder, easily accessible to the user, the court heard. The majority of the images were found on one of two hard drives connected to a separate device.

This contained over 2,000 images of the worst category, over 2,000 images of category B and over 18,000 images of category C, the court heard. 

Barbosa was arrested on 15 March. Crown Advocate Chris Dunford described the defendant's reaction to being questioned: "He said 'I'm stupid.' He said he would never assault a child. He said he only looked at the images when he was drunk. He said he drank every day. 

"He said he had been looking at the material for 10 years and that he did get aroused: 'It's like I feel something is wrong, seeing the pictures is a different world,' he said when questioned," the court heard. 

Pictured: Guernsey Prison.

Barbosa was described by his defence lawyer Advocate Andrew Ayres as a 'loner' who had never had a relationship with another person. 

"He is clearly a loner who took to alcohol abuse. He created a bubble around himself in his room, not having had a relationship with another person. He could not be more accepting of his punishment," he said. 

A discount to his sentence was handed down because Barbosa was previously of good character. Other mitigation included the fact that there was no evidence of him sharing the images.

A short deliberation saw Judge Russell Finch return with the other Jurats to give one sentence of three years and six months for creating images of a child or children under the age of 16 and five sentences of two years imprisonment for each sample image from the SAP scale 1-5. 

"You were arrested by chance, we are grateful to [the witness]," he said.

"The large number of images is an aggravating factor [over 100 images is considered a large amount]. The side effects on these young children involved can only be surmised."

The sentences were to run concurrently - totalling three years and six months - effective as of his original arrest date on 15 March. The man was also recommended by the court to be deported upon completion of his sentence. 

Pictured top: Flean Barbosa.