He pleaded guilty to one count of making category A images, another count of making category b images, and a further count of possessing 36,604 category C images – with the crimes committed in the period spanning 13 May 2018 to 15 November 2022. 

The Royal Court sentenced him to two years and 10 months in prison, applied a two-year extended sentence license and made him subject to a five-year notification order for what the judge described as “vile and revolting crimes”.  

Prosecuting Advocate Sarah Watson told the court that Denning was arrested on 15 November 2022 after police executed a warrant at his house following the linking of his IP address to the download of child porn. 

He initially claimed in police interview that he scavenged for old devices at the tip, found a hard drive, and transferred the data to his own devices out of curiosity, but denied viewing the files. 

In a second interview officers put the number of images found to him where he then admitted downloading and “drifting into” the habit, but said he wasn’t interested in category A content and its presence on his devices was inadvertent. 

But Advocate Watson said officers found that a category A video had been opened multiple times in 2018, while Denning’s browsing history showed searches for “five year old to 14 year old”, bookmarks for well-known pornography sites, and software used to evade detection and file shredding programs.  

Pictured: Denning was sent to Les Nicolles.

Advocate Sam Maindonald, defending, said Denning had candidly admitted his offending to probation and how he got “sucked into the dark web”. 

He was “thoroughly ashamed of himself and embarrassed” and “never realised how much his collection grew over the years”. 

It was noted that some of the images were duplicates, while Denning had been diagnosed with autism and collecting and categorising can be a common feature of that disorder. 

Advocate Maindonald said Denning “lost sight of his actions and forgot these images involved actual children”, but since then had shown “considerable insight into this”. 

Judge Catherine Fooks, sentencing, said scavenging for devices was a clear lie, with accidental acquisition of category A and B images rejected. 

The huge number of images was an aggravating factor, and he was “right to be ashamed of downloading such images for your own perverted pleasure,” she said. 

“Public interest demands that those who commit such offences are punished... you have only yourself to blame. 

“You have since your arrest been able to reflect and are rightly ashamed you have contributed to child sexual exploitation,” she said. 

But she added that a “long piece of work” with the sexual offender's program is required to right his wrongs.  

He was sentenced to two years and ten months for count one, and nine and six months for the other two counts to run concurrently. Forfeiture of his devices was also ordered.