Paedophile found with huge haul of sick images and videos of children
MORE THAN A MILLION IMAGES FOUND ON VARIOUS DEVICES
A PERVERTED sex offender was found with an enormous haul of more than a million images, including tens of thousands of sickening indecent pictures and videos of children, after police searched his computer equipment.
The appalling images, many of them in the most serious category, was so colossal that police eventually had to abandon the major task of trying to categorise them all because they just did not have the time and resources.
Ex-security officer Martin Cawkwell used search terms such as “budding beauties” when looking online for sick images of children but he later tried to pretend that he was actually just looking for plants.
He also claimed he did not have a sexual interest in children and that there was “nothing outrageous and inappropriate” about the images that he had but he later confessed that he was lying, Hull Crown Court heard.
Cawkwell, 64, of Brisbane Street, off Hessle Road, west Hull, admitted distributing indecent images of children, five offences of making indecent images of children and other offences of possessing extreme images involving bestiality and possessing prohibited images.
Amber Hobson, prosecuting, said that, on October 5, 2022, police arrested Cawkwell at his home after receiving reports that he had downloaded more than 1,000 indecent images between December 2021 and June 2022.
He had shared some of those images online.
A file sharing program had been used to upload images to a site. There were 53,099 indecent images on a computer – with 990,099 more images and videos.
The second haul was so large that the police had not even got the time and resources to categorise that batch so they concentrated on the 53,099 that had been categorised and treated these as a representative sample for evidence.
The images identified included 2,507 in the most serious Category A as well as 15,010 in Category B and 12,236 in Category C. There were 67 extreme bestiality images and four prohibited images.
There were also videos including 257 in Category A, 55 in Category B and 35 in Category C as well as 49 extreme bestiality videos. A computer tower had 4,788 images in Category A and 7,587 in Category B as well as others. Videos were also found.
Police again went to Cawkwell’s home in June last year but he quickly pressed a button on his computer equipment in a bid to delete the data. Police managed to stop him doing this by turning off the power at the wall. Videos in the two most serious categories were found.
He had bought this computer just two days after first being arrested. He was again arrested in June this year. He had no previous convictions.
Rachel Scott, mitigating, said Cawkwell originally claimed that he had no sexual interest in children but he later admitted that he did. “He accepts that he has a sexual interest in children and he is very embarrassed and ashamed about that,” said Miss Scott.
“A lot of people don’t accept that sexual interest. He had no interest in this sort of material for a long time. He is absolutely appalled to find himself here.
“He is incredibly keen to work with the probation service. He never wants to return here and he wants to put this offending behind him.”
Cawkwell worked as a security officer for 21 years but he was now unemployed, with health problems.
Recorder Abdul Iqbal KC told Cawkwell: “There were many, many thousands of images that you had been viewing – over a million in total that were found on systems, not all of which were accessible.
“You were released under investigation. It came to the knowledge of the police that you were behaving in the same way again, downloading indecent images of children. They were made available for sharing online.”
The indecent images were, unlike what Cawkwell claimed, “outrageous and inappropriate” because the market that people like Cawkwell created by wanting to access such material fuelled the abuse of children nationally and internationally.
Cawkwell was given 30 days’ rehabilitation and a five-year sexual harm prevention order. He must register as a sex offender for five years and he was ordered to pay £150 costs.
His computer equipment will be forfeited.