HUDDERSFIELD PAEDOPHILE GETS SUSPENDED SENTENCE FOR CHILD IMAGE HOARDING
A young man from Huddersfield, aged 23, who collected illegal extreme images of children and animals, has been given a suspended prison sentence.Declan McQuillan started gathering these unlawful images around 2015 when he was about 16 years old.
Last May, authorities carried out a raid on his home, seizing his phone and computer, which revealed hundreds of illegal images of minors.
Prosecutor David Mackay told Leeds Crown Court that McQuillan showed a sexual fascination with boys aged from 12 up to mid-teens.
It emerged in court that he used the internet to search phrases such as 'hot young boys' and that he had installed a secure cloud storage app.
His activities surfaced when digital evidence indicated he had uploaded images online.
On May 20, 2021, police searched his residence, confiscating his mobile, laptop, desktop computer, and external hard drive.
During interviews, he denied knowing about the images, stating he used Tumblr for chatting and would report inappropriate content, only to check later if it had been removed.
An examination of his devices found he had downloaded 554 images on his phone, including one classified as Category C, along with 70 extreme pornographic images and six moving images of similar content.
His desktop featured more illegal images and videos, including Category A and C files, amounting to hundreds.
The visual material depicted children, including infants, engaging in sexual acts, and some involved bestiality.
Mackay clarified that some images showed children as young as 12 involved in sexual acts and others depicted infants or animals.
McQuillan was re-interviewed in March this year, during which he claimed he had not intentionally downloaded the material and that some files might have been acquired accidentally.
In October, he admitted guilt on all counts.
A pre-sentence report, introduced by Susannah Proctor, was part of his mitigation.
His Honour Judge Batty sentenced him to eight months in jail, suspended for two years, with conditions such as a program order, 30 days of rehabilitative activity, and a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
The judge noted that the purpose was to allow McQuillan to engage with probation services and to protect the wider community, praising his honesty about his actions.
While recognizing the seriousness of the offenses, the court concluded that supervised probation was the best approach, especially given his cooperation and acceptance of responsibility.
