Third-time offender a ‘hard risk’ to children, says judge
A third conviction in five years for possession of indecent images of children has seen 41-year-old Paul Fox sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.
The defendant blamed feeling depressed and lonely for his latest criminal behaviour.
Lt-Bailiff Russell Finch gave some credit for Fox’s guilty pleas and early surrender of password information, but expressed his concerns.
‘You generally have an unimpressive record and you do not learn from your mistakes,’ he said.
‘At present you are a hard risk to children, and are unmanageable in the community at this time.’
The defendant, who appeared in the Royal Court from custody, breached his extended sentence licence from his previous conviction of possessing images by using a mobile phone with access to the internet.
As per his licence conditions, police officers made an unannounced visit to his home, where they found an iPhone charger and a sim card.
Fox told officers that the charger had belonged to a friend and he had removed the sim card from his Nokia phone due to receiving too many messages.
He was arrested.
An iPhone was retrieved from under his bed and seized, along with three Nokia phones.
There was no evidence of indecent images on the Nokia devices.
The iPhone had two Apple IDs logged in, and various accounts under different pseudonyms.
The high-tech crime unit found nine images and Fox faced charges relating to five of them, consisting of one category A image – the most extreme category – and four category C images. Members of the court were told that one image referred to ‘a very young girl’.
During interview Fox gave no comment to the majority of questions but said: ‘I knew I was being stupid, I knew I was taking a risk, but I was depressed.’
He said that he had taken the phone from a friend because he was depressed after the death of a relative, and he wanted internet access to seek companionship.
He had used online chat rooms and apps where people exchanged images.
Fox said he had the phone on and off since he received it in November 2022. He started using it to play games and contact people.
He noticed that the people in the images sent to him became younger and younger.
He told the senders: ‘I have been done for this before, I want to keep this about 18 [years old].’
In January 2019, Fox was sentenced to 18 months in prison for seven counts of making and distributing indecent images of children.
He was sentenced again in December 2020 to two years and nine months in prison after he breached his licence conditions less than four months after being released.
Defending, Advocate Sam Steel said that Fox knew he was breaching his conditions by using the phone, but that he was depressed and socially withdrawn.
He handed his phone to police as soon as he learnt it was going to be searched and gave up his passwords immediately.
Advocate Steel said that this case had a relatively low number of images compared to others. Fox knew he put himself at risk by joining online chat rooms and felt a high level of shame and embarrassment.
Fox was sentenced to four years and six months in prison for the category A image charge, and 18 months for the category C images, to be served concurrently.
He was also given a five-year extended sentence, 10-year sexual offence prevention order, and 10-year notification period.
