Update: Burns (pictured) has been released back to Lisburn

May 2017

Perverts had 20,000 sex abuse images on computers

Two men jailed on Friday had a total of more than 20,000 child sexual abuse images on their computers.

National Crime Agency officers arrested Michael Gordon, 64, of Belfast and Philip Burns, 27, of Lisburn, in February 2016 as part of a wider joint investigation with the PSNI.

The two men are not believed to have known each other.

NCA forensic examiners found a cache of almost 10,000 images of child abuse and bestiality on Burns’s computers.

He was convicted of 14 counts of making indecent images of children and four counts of possessing extreme pornography at Craigavon Crown Court in March this year.

At the same court on Friday he was sentenced 15 months imprisonment, a ten-year sexual offences prevention order (SOPO) and banned from seeking employment which involves working with children.

Gordon, appearing at Belfast Crown Court, was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for three years, and made subject to a SOPO to run for ten years.

After his arrest he admitted to NCA officers he had encountered child abuse images online but claimed it was always by accident when searching for legal pornography.

He told NCA officers they would not find images of child abuse on his computers, adding: “It’s not what I go looking for.”

But NCA officers’ forensic examination of Gordon’s computers found almost 11,000 abuse images, many in the most serious category.

They also found extreme pornographic images including depictions of bestiality.

Gordon was convicted on 21 April this year at Belfast Crown Court of 14 counts of making indecent images of children, five counts of possessing prohibited images of children and five counts of possessing extreme pornography.