Teenager ran biggest internet child porn library in Britain
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A computer clerk who ran Britain's biggest and "busiest" online child pornography library was jailed for two years by the Old Bailey yesterday.
A computer clerk who ran Britain's biggest and "busiest" online child pornography library was jailed for two years by the Old Bailey yesterday.
Darren Guest was only 19 when his activities were discovered during routine monitoring of the internet by officers in Greater Manchester's obscene publications unit. The court was told that he built up an "abhorrent" collection of pre-teen images, helped by other paedophiles contacted through internet chatrooms.
Guest, a data entry clerk now aged 20, operated a sophisticated exchange system, using "sick" advertisements to invite others to swap pictures in return for access to his collection, jurors were told. He promised that "good young baby, toddler or really sexy boy-girl pics" would earn free downloads from his collection.
His 2,000-image library contained portrayals of "sexual activity between children, penetrative sexual activity between adults and children, and bondage", and proved so popular that in one four-day period it had nearly 3,000 visitors.
Guest, from Stratford, east London, was unanimously convicted of 32 offences, including 18 counts of making indecent photographs of a child and possessing them with a view to distribution, and two charges of publishing an advertisement "likely to be understood as conveying he distributed or showed indecent photographs of children".
Judge Fingret told him that while he was not trying to make money "there was nevertheless a carefully planned and sophisticated method of exchange between you and other users.These images are clear evidence that at some stage serious offences were committed, not by you but by others." The children would continue to suffer damage because people such as Guest were distributing pictures of their ordeals. The judge added that when Guest was released from jail his details would be included in the sex offenders register for 10 years.