CHESTER MAN GUILTY OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AND INDECENT EXPOSURE
A man named Stephen Edward Birch, aged 44 and living on Grange Road in Chester, was implicated in alarming criminal conduct involving child pornography and indecent exposure.He conducted online searches for pornographic images of young girls and stored the images in a file labeled XXX, citing that he found them appealing.
While riding his bicycle toward Lime Wood Park on Kingsway, Birch encountered two young girls, aged nine and ten, who were playing on a scooter.
He was dressed in a dark beanie and a high visibility jacket that concealed two indecent images of children in a pocket.
Birch made a circuit around the girls and then stopped about a foot away, dismounted his bike, and after asking, 'excuse me girls,' paused before exposing himself and asking, 'have you ever seen one of these?' The girls, shocked and frightened, ran away screaming to their fathers who sat nearby.
The prosecution, led by Nicholas Williams, commented: 'He started by browsing the internet for child pornography, driven by a sexual interest in children.
He then sought out young girls who appeared to be unsupervised.
Around 5 pm, he encountered two girls of a similar age, who seemed unaccompanied, and turned a disturbing fantasy into reality.' Birch was found guilty at Chester Crown Court of violating a sexual prevention order previously issued for indecent exposure.
Despite maintaining his innocence and claiming he was at home playing poker and watching football that day, Birch said, 'It wasn’t me.
I know I didn’t go out that Sunday.' He is due to be sentenced on July 31 at Chester Crown Court for both the breach and possession of indecent images of children.
