September 2010

Child porn arrest was ‘weight lifted off shoulders’

A man who admitted downloading indecent images of children has said being arrested felt like “a weight lifted off his shoulders”.

Francis Hutchinson, 51, from Burnham on Sea, Somerset, also said it was right he had been caught.

Paul Light, for Hutchinson, said his client had offered no excuses and that his remorse and own experience of abuse meant he should not be jailed.

At Taunton Crown Court, Hutchinson was given a six-month suspended sentence.

In court, Hutchinson pleaded guilty to downloading five indecent movie files featuring a child and 1,303 indecent still images, 35 of which were judged to be second most serious type of images.

The crimes happened between January 2005 and 12 August 2009.

He was arrested after an internet bulletin board hosted in the United States identified him.