A former serviceman found to have shared sickening extreme pornographic and child abuse images with former colleagues put himself at risk of a first prison sentence.
Christopher Graham James Henderson was arrested at his home address in August 2022 when a number of devices were recovered.
Durham Crown Court was told he made no comment to police questions, and, when asked for details of log-in names and passwords, he refused to co-operate, even when served with a formal notice to do so.
Cainan Lonsdale, prosecuting, said, eventually, forensic digital analysis of the devices unearthed indecent images of children across all levels of severity and extreme pornographic footage.
All but some of the extreme pornographic were inaccessible to users, stored in caches or deleted.
Across all the devices there were 82 indecent images, 20 in the most serious category, 16 of which were videos, plus 25 classed as extreme pornography, 22 in video form.
Mr Lonsdale said examination of Henderson’s seized iphones showed some of those images were previously stored in its gallery section.
Multiple searches had been made for the images, some from March 2020, using indicative terms.
Mr Lonsdale said the images downloaded featured children aged from six to 15 being abused, some being restrained and showing obvious signs of distress.
The extreme pornography was mostly shared material found on the two phones, with the comments made by the defendant proving the sickening nature of some of the images and footage, featuring a variety of animals.
Mr Lonsdale said it would appear these were shared, “more for shock factor than sexual gratification”.
Following the results of the forensic examination Henderson was re-arrested in February this year and made no comment.
But when the 37-year-old defendant, of Poppy Lane, Shotton Colliery, appeared before magistrates last month (June), he admitted three counts of making indecent images of children and one of possessing extreme pornography.
Kelly Clarke, in mitigation, said the defendant, who has no previous offences on his record, had a long Army career, performing several tours of duty abroad, with the adverse effect often seen by ex-servicemen, suffering mental health issues.
She said he is on the waiting list for formal mental health assessment as well as for counselling.
Ms Clarke said the defendant has set up his own business restoring classic cars, into which he has ploughed a lot of savings, leaving him living on, “the bare minimum”.
She said “horrible” as the material was, the number of images involved is not as high as is sometimes seen in such cases, and it took place over a two-year period.
Recognising he could be facing a prison term, Ms Clarke urged Judge Nathan Adams to suspend the sentence.
“He’s had a full-on Army career and is a committed working man who has never experienced custody.
“Clearly he does have issues which need to be addressed and my submission is that they can be addressed in the community.”
Referring to the child abuse images, Judge Adams told Henderson: “These were real victims of horrendous sexual crime, some at a very young age, and anyone sharing this sort of material is only encouraging production of more images of this nature.”
Imposing a ten-month prison sentence, Judge Adams told Henderson only his lack of previous offences enabled him to suspend it for two years.
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During that period he must undergo 20 rehabilitation activity days, overseen by the Probation Service, and observe a mental health treatment requirement for six months.
He will also be subject of registration as a sex offender, and restrictions under the terms of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, both for ten years.
Judge Adams told him: “I hope the outcome is that this is the last we will see you in these courts.”
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