SIMON PAVITT OF COLCHESTER SENTENCED TO JAIL FOR CHILD SEX ABUSE IMAGES

In July 2009, Simon Pavitt, a 41-year-old resident of Mersea Road, Colchester, was sentenced to eight months in prison after admitting to possessing nearly 11,000 indecent images of children on his computer. Pavitt pleaded guilty to ten charges of making indecent images of children and one of possessing them, with the offenses spanning from November 2005 to February 2008.

Among the images, 200 were classified as the most serious category, which Judge David Turner described as “a ghastly collection.” During the court hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court, it was revealed that Pavitt had been a victim of abuse himself at around nine or ten years old. His lawyer, Steven Levy, explained that Pavitt had experienced flashbacks triggered when he was near his childhood home during work. Levy stated, “He started to try and reconcile the abuse he had suffered, by trying to understand the motivation of people who abused others. As a result he started trawling the internet for information.”

It was during this online search that Pavitt engaged in feigned interest in indecent images through chats, which drew police attention. Judge Turner expressed his disappointment, saying, “It’s a chilling combination of material. How you could pretend to be simply looking as a way of understanding your own background entirely defeats me.”

Pavitt will serve half of his sentence in prison, with the remaining period on conditional license. He has been placed on the sex offenders’ register for ten years, subjected to a five-year sex offenders’ protection order, and prohibited from working with children or vulnerable young adults.