Man caught with "abhorrent" images on phone

Monday 21 January 2019

Guernsey's Royal Court has jailed a man for 18 months after finding his excuse for having more than 30 indecent images of children on his phone 'totally implausible'.

On 2 September last year, Paul Fox, 37, left his phone at a garden he was working on when a friend and colleague retrieved it for him.

That person knew the passcode to Fox's phone, and unlocked it, where he found an indecent image of someone under 16.

He called Guernsey Police, who arrested Fox and seized his phone. Fox also made officers aware of a second phone, which they also retrieved, and was examined by the High Tech Crime Unit. They found just over 30 category one images, two category two images, two category three images and one category four image across Fox's two mobiles.

He was charged with five counts of possession of indecent images of under 16-year-olds, one count of distributing an indecent image and one count of producing an image (by screenshooting it). 

Fox was re-arrested just days after he was bailed on the 2 September, as the police were tipped off he might try and leave the island before those charges were brought. He has been remanded in custody ever since, and has in that time served a two month prison sentence for other offences.

Fox served a two month prison sentence for separate offences during his time on remand for the indecent images.

While he did plead guilty to the charges, from the start of his police interviews, Fox claimed a sex messaging app he used on his mobiles had automatically downloaded the images to his phone when they were sent to groups he was in. He used those groups to share and receive explicit images of himself and the other adults in them, however the Court was told he claimed sometimes people would join those groups and send indecent images of children. They would be banned, but the app downloaded the photos to his library.

However, the Law Officers had contacted the company behind the app, and they confirmed this was not the way it worked. Fox would have had to actively download the images.

Fox's excuse as to why he had not deleted the images was because he "did it in batches" when his phone told him the memory was getting full. He said he didn't look at the images and was "disgusted by them".

The charge for distributing an image was brought because he had sent a single one of the images to a contact on WhatsApp. 

Fox's defence advocate was instructed by his client to not try and contest the inevitability of a prison sentence in this case, but also told the court that Fox had yet to fully face up to any issues or demons he had. Because of these instructions, no mitigation was offered other than the early guilty pleas which he entered. 

Overall, Fox was sentenced to 18 months in prison, a three year extended sentence and a 10 year notification period. This means he will be under close police supervision with regular check ups for all of that time. For the extended sentence, he will be subject to a long list of requirements, such as not being able to access the Internet without permission.

Deputy Bailiff Richard McMahon told Fox the court and "any right thinking person" found his actions "abhorrent and revolting". 

The destruction of the phones was also ordered during last week's court hearing. 

Pictured top: File image of a mobile phone.