A FORMER Ledbury shopkeeper who smuggled photographs of naked children into Britain from France has walked free from court.
Adrian Wilson, aged 36, was given five books and five postcards by a paedophile while visiting Paris.
Customs officers seized them in a raid last year on his home above Truffles and More, the food shop he ran in Church Street.
A jury convicted him of one count of smuggling indecent pictures of children and one of harbouring them. But they cleared him of a second smuggling charge after hearing how a French source sent him 16 more child porn pictures through the post.
Wilson’s barrister claimed those pictures were meant for Michael Taylor, a former vicar and convicted sex offender who lived with Wilson.
Sentencing Wilson to a two-year conditional discharge, Recorder Colman Treacy QC said he believed he was ‘sucked into’ sinister behaviour by his associates.
He said: “I believe you lost your bearings on that ill-advised trip and succumbed to a sense of curiosity.”
The pictures Wilson brought in were naturist in character rather than of sexually explicit poses, he added.
And Recorder Treacy said the former Worcester Samaritans worker had lost his business and been forced to move to a London bed-sit since his arrest.
Five years on ‘register’
He ordered Wilson to be placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years.
During the three-day trial, Worcester Crown Court heard how the defendant went on a five-day trip to Paris with Mr Taylor, a friend from boyhood. He watched paedophile and porn films, visited a gay sauna and said a man named Jean-Claude gave him the indecent material as a present.
Roger Harrison, defending, said Wilson had fallen into temptation to take the books home.
The court case had ruined his life and he had suffered hate mail, abusive telephone calls and needed counselling.
Mr Harrison said: “This was a short fall from grace by a decent man. There is absolutely no risk of repetition.” Wilson gave a ‘warts- and-all’ account to the jury, even though it was to his discredit.
But he had shown himself to be a compassionate man, illustrated by his work with mercy missions to war-torn eastern Europe.
A nurse who helped refugees alongside him testified that he was the most honest and just person she had ever met.
Prosecutor Robert Davies said Wilson’s non-judgemental philosophy towards paedophiles consisted of ‘easy platitudes to avoid responsibility’.
He had the choice to leave child photographs behind in Paris – but instead took the decision to bring them home.
