STEPHEN HAINES SPARED JAIL FOR POSSESSING CHILD RAPE IMAGES
A PAEDOPHILE who downloaded and "scored" nearly 200,000 images and videos of children as young as six being abused, raped and assaulted, has been spared jail.Stephen Haines, 63, of Huntsmoor Road, Tadley, appeared for sentencing in Winchester Crown Court on Friday, January 16, having previously pleaded guilty to possessing 171,744 indecent photographs / pseudo-photographs of children in categories A, B and C.
This included both still and moving images.
The court heard that police raided Haines' Tadley home on June 8 last year, and seized several devices which had hundreds of thousands of indecent images of children as young as six-years-old saved to them.
Haines admitted to the police at the time: "I am going to confess, I do have images." The court heard that Haines had accumulated the images over the course of 10 years from a peer-to-peer sharing network on the dark web, and had "catalogued and scored" them for his own pleasure.
In total, Haines had acquired 182 images in Class A - the most serious - 333 in Class B, and 171,229 in Class C.
When passing sentence, Judge Christopher Parker KC said: "Up until you entered your guilty pleas, you were a person of good character.
You looked at an enormous number of images of children being abused, raped and otherwise assaulted.
It is certainly a good thing that you have been found out." The judge noted that Haines has paid for his own help since his arrest and is doing his "best" to "change his ways".
He added: "I note that the images were still and moving.
You were cataloguing and scoring the images for your future pleasure.
What you were doing is appallingly wrong." Haines was sentenced to 12 months in prison for the Category A images, six months for the Category B images, and four months for the Category C images.
All would run concurrently and have been suspended for a period of two years.
Haines must also complete unpaid work and up to 25 hours of rehabilitation.
He is subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, which is in place for 10 years.
Judge Parker concluded: "You need to recognise that you cannot behave in this way.
If you offend again, you can expect a very long sentence indeed."
