Police caught hundreds of perverts with child abuse images in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire in just one year.
Shock new figures reveal Staffordshire Police recorded 442 offences involving child porn in 2017/18 compared to 417 on the previous 12 months.
It comes as Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court is dealing with more and more cases involving sickening pictures of children.
Perverts caught with child abuse images
A devious pervert with 95 offences on his record who was jailed after being caught with child abuse images – AGAIN.
Paedophile Robert Hicks, who has been a registered sex offender since 2003, was only released from prison four months ago.
But the 64-year-old, below, was locked up for another 14 months last month after he breached a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) by making indecent photographs of children and using a tablet and memory stick.
Hicks, of Rectory Road, Shelton, had pleaded guilty to two offences of breaching a SHPO and one charge of making indecent images of children.
Pervert Dean Walmsley, below, who was jailed after police found indecent images of children on two of his mobile phones.
Officers detained the 27-year-old - who has a lengthy history of sexual offences - after he tried to run away from them when they asked if he had a mobile phone on him.
They discovered a phone in his pocket and found it had 28 indecent images. A second phone - seized during an earlier investigation - was found to have 109 indecent images.
Walmsley, of no fixed address, was jailed for 32 months at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court after pleading guilty to two offences of breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) and two offences of making indecent images of children.
The 38-year-old, below, came across the images of children aged six to 12 being sexually abused while searching for adult pornography.
But instead of deleting them he stored them in a folder labelled ‘Young’.
The images were discovered when police searched his home and found six indecent images at category A – the most serious – on his computer tower together with 23 images at category C.
Quick, of Lightwood Road, Longton, was handed a four-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months after pleadnig guilty to two offences of making indecent images of children.
Pervert Christopher Powell, below, who was caught with thousands of child abuse images and extreme pornography.
The 31-year-old, who is a carer for his mum and dad, was arrested after the photos and videos were found on a laptop when the police raided his home.
The defendant initially denied any wrongdoing but went on to plead guilty to possessing indecent images of children and possessing extreme pornography shortly before he was due to stand trial.
In total, police found 383 images at category A, the most serious; 249 at category B; and 2,745 Category C. A total of 96 extreme porn pictures were also recovered.
Powell, of King Street, Fenton, was handed a suspended prison sentence at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court and was also made the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order.
Council worker Anthony Rawlingson, below, who was sacked and sent to prison for downloading indecent images of children.
The 56-year-old, who was a Stoke-on-Trent City Council employee, was found to have hundreds of photographs on his laptop.
Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard many involved very young children, and one even featured a baby – no more than a few weeks old – being abused.
Police raided Rawlingson’s home and seized his laptop computer which contained 562 indecent images of children. Of those, 162 images and two videos were classed as Category A – the most serious category.
The court heard officers also found Rawlingson had been chatting online to other men about children being abused.
Rawlingson, of Gilman Street, Hanley, was jailed for 12 months after pleading guilty to three charges of possessing indecent images of children.
Teenage pervert Jack Heslop who was caught downloading child abuse images on his work phone – after it was sent off for repair.
The 19-year-old, below, was arrested after his mobile was sent to be fixed and engineers contacted the police when they discovered the sickening photographs.
His Fenton home was searched and officers recovered another phone and computer.
All three devices were analysed and found to contain 71 indecent images of children.
In total officers found 54 category A images – the most serious – four at category B and 13 at category C.
Heslop, of Ballinson Road, Blurton, was handed a suspended jail sentence after pleading guilty to three offences of possessing indecent images of children.
The figures have been released after the NSPCC made a Freedom of Information request to every police force in the country.
Nationally, 22,724 offences were recorded in 2017/18 – up by nearly a quarter on 2016/17.
The NSPCC is now warning that offenders are using social networks to target children for abuse online, grooming and manipulating them into sending naked images.
The charity’s WildWestWeb campaign is calling on the Government to prevent abuse from happening in the first place by introducing an independent regulator to hold social networks to account and tackle grooming to cut off the supply of these images at source.
Tony Stower, NSPCC’s head of child safety online, said: “Every one of these images represents a real child who has been groomed and abused to supply the demand of this appalling trade.
“The lack of adequate protections on social networks has given offenders all too easy access to children to target and abuse. This is the last chance saloon for social networks on whose platforms this abuse is often taking place.
“Our Wild West Web campaign is calling on Government to introduce a tough independent regulator to hold social networks to account and tackle grooming to cut off supply of these images at source.”
While UK authorities work to remove child abuse images from the internet new images are constantly uploaded. In 2017, the Inter
net Watch Foundation identified over 78,000 URLs containing child sexual abuse images.
