November 2019

Sexual deviant caught with nearly two million indecent videos and images

A sexual deviant caught with nearly two million indecent videos and images created descriptive folders on his computer so other perverts could easily access child abuse material online.

Burnley Crown Court heard how “intelligent” and “well-educated” Romanian Sebastian Cosmin Bonta had created more than 60 folders with detailed and graphic descriptions of what sordid videos contained, such as “five-year-olds” and “rape”.

Prosecuting, Stephen Parker said the child sexual abuse material was made available to access over the internet via a network.

The youngest child being abused was estimated to be just two, while police also found bestiality material on 34-year-old Bonta’s laptop.

Mr Parker said police had gone to a house in Elmwood Street, Burnley, on August 8 following intelligence that child pornography was being accessed from there.

Inside officers found three foreign nationals, including Bonta, and they asked who spoke the best English.

When police explained to Bonta why they were there, he said: “I have seen pictures of children.”

Bonta was arrested on suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children. During police interview he accepted the computer devices police had attributed to him were his but denied he was responsible for downloading indecent images of children.

On one of the devices police found 7,002 category A images of children – the most serious examples of child sexual abuse showing the rape of children – 64 category B, 62 category C and 882 extreme pornographic images.

Mr Parker said there were more than 1.8 million video and images that police hadn’t examined, although he accepted that some of those could have been legal pornography.

Bonta pleaded guilty to three offences of making indecent images of children and making extreme pornography.

However Mr Parker said the defendant may face further charges in the future.

Mr Parker said: “At the moment he is indicted for making in terms of not being the filmer of them but but uploading them. That wasn’t the only device seized from the defendant. They’re in due course going to be examined.

“If all that is found is further A, B and C images it’s unlikely that’s going to be troubling the courts again. If there is evidence of distribution that’s going to be a different scenario.

“There is a significant amount of work to be done, not just in terms of this defendant, but other defendants as well.

“In relation to the operation that led to the arrest of this defendant that incorporated over 30 defendants.”

Sentencing Bonta to 18 months imprisonment, Judge Simon Medland QC said: “You are 34. You are a wholly intelligent man. You have a university degree and a postgraduate qualification in psychology. You don’t take drugs, you barely drink alcohol at all. You have no psychological or psychotic problems. It is therefore all the more sad that I have to sentence you for possessing a vast quantity of unlawful pornography.”

Judge Medland told Bonta he would be deported on his release from prison.