A MAN who made indecent photographs of children using a photo imaging package on his computer has been put on a community order.
Colin McKinley, of Chain Court, Okus, added what he thought were ‘amusing’ and ‘rude’ comments to the pictures then catalogued them on a memory stick.
But after hearing how the 57-year-old had been on bail for almost two years and stopped offending during that time, a judge sitting at Swindon Crown Court decided not to jail him.
Claire Marlow, prosecuting, said the police received information about the defendant from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in August 2007.
An email address related to McKinley had been involved in the downloading of six indecent images of children from a compromised website.
She said almost two years later, in September 2009, officers from the Wiltshire force went to his home to arrest him. His wife was at home alone, as he was at work, and officers seized a number of computers as well as floppy discs and other storage media.
McKinley was arrested at work and taken to Swindon police station where he admitted he had been searching for and downloading child pornography.
He said he manipulated the images using photo software adding the captions before storing them on a memory stick. When the memory stick was full he said he deleted them all and then started all over again.
He said he knew what he was doing was illegal but got sexual pleasure from the pictures, most of which were of children under 13.
Miss Marlow said a total of 3,980 indecent images of children were found which had been downloaded between May 2001 and August 2009.
She said investigators also found eight images of extreme pornography, which involved animals with adults or children.
McKinley pleaded guilty to 13 counts of making and one of possessing indecent images of children and one of having extreme pornography.
Nick Fridd, defending, said the police had the information about his client two years before he was arrested and he has been on bail for 23 months.
When he was questioned he told the police he had wanted to stop what he was doing and when he was spoken to after his computer was examined it was found he had not reoffended.
Mr Fridd said some of the images were not indecent until he had manipulated them with the software.
McKinley was given a three year community order and told him to go on a sex offenders’ programme and register as a sex offender for five years.
