LEONARD BROCKELSBY FROM PASTON SENTENCED FOR CHILD ABUSE IMAGE DOWNLOADS IN PETERBOROUGH

In July 2003, a man from Paston named Leonard Brockelsby was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after being found guilty of downloading a vast collection of child abuse images from the internet. The 45-year-old, who works as a self-employed electrician, had accumulated approximately 2,000 indecent photographs of children, which he stored on floppy disks and CD-ROMs.

His arrest was part of a larger police operation known as Operation Ore, which was initiated following the FBI's discovery of a child pornography website called Landslide. This website had a database containing the names of around 7,000 individuals from the United Kingdom who had accessed or subscribed to the site. The police obtained this database and used it to identify and investigate suspects across the UK.

During the investigation, authorities raided Brockelsby's residence in December of the previous year. They confiscated his electronic equipment, which included the disks and other storage devices containing the illicit images. Prosecutors revealed that the images had been downloaded over a period stretching from March 2001 to October 2002.

At the time of his arrest, Brockelsby claimed that he had downloaded the images with the intention of reporting them to the authorities, rather than for personal gratification. However, during a court hearing at Peterborough Magistrates' Court last month, he pleaded guilty to 24 charges of making indecent images of children.

When he appeared before Peterborough Crown Court for sentencing, Brockelsby requested that 129 similar offences be taken into account in his case. It was also disclosed that nearly half of the images he possessed depicted the most severe forms of child abuse, involving children as young as just 12 months old.

Further background information revealed that Brockelsby had previously served a five-year prison sentence for the rape of an 18-year-old woman at knifepoint, indicating a history of serious criminal behavior.

His defense lawyer, Charles Myatt, argued that there is a legal distinction between creating images with a camera and downloading them from the internet. He suggested that the latter is considered less serious, although he acknowledged that Brockelsby was likely to face imprisonment.

Judge Neil McKittrick, presiding over the case, emphasized the gravity of Brockelsby's actions. He stated, "It is plain the images are of really young children, one perhaps little more than an infant. A custodial sentence is the only suitable punishment."

Adding a personal dimension to the case, Brockelsby's wife expressed her anguish, stating that she and their three children— a 25-year-old daughter and two sons aged 18 and 16— never wanted to have any contact with him again. She described the situation as "a nightmare."

Judge McKittrick also addressed the broader implications of Brockelsby's crimes, noting that his actions had "contributed" to the child abuse industry. He explained, "It has been put that downloading pictures from the Internet is less serious than taking the pictures. I accept that to a point, but by downloading them you are part of a chain that contributes towards young children, perhaps in a far away country, being abused, degraded and harmed."