Charity boss is spared jail

Paul Corbyn, 44, of Moonrakers, Devizes, was sentenced to two years' community rehabilitation, and will be required to attend the Thames Valley sex offender programme. His name will remain on the sex offenders' register for five years.

Judge Keith Cutler told Corbyn, who had pleaded guilty at Kennet Magistrates' Court in Devizes on May 20 to six charges of downloading pornographic images from the Internet and sending them to another person, that what made his offences so serious was that the children portrayed were from eastern Europe where families are so poor they are forced to let their children pose for indecent pictures.

But he said that the pictures were "very far from the worst images I have had to view in recent years."

He said Corbyn had already been punished by the loss of his job, and the good opinion of his friends.

After the hearing on Friday, Mr Corbyn declined to comment.

Charity boss spared jail over child porn

PAUL Corbyn, the former chairman of mental health charity Wiltshire MIND, has escaped a jail sentence for downloading child porn from the internet.

Corbyn, 44, a former shop manager of Moonrakers, Devizes, faced a custodial sentence after pleading guilty before Kennet magistrates on May 20 to three specimen charges of downloading indecent images of children from the internet and three charges of distributing them.

Magistrates called for an all-options pre-sentence report and the case was adjourned until Friday when Judge Keith Cutler considered sentence at Salisbury Crown Court.

Colin Meeke, prosecuting, told the court that the offences came to light when Corbyn took his computer into Devizes Computers and Games to have it repaired after he found difficulty in starting it up.

Staff at the computer company found an enormous number of images of children on the machine's hard drive on a number of different files. Some, said Mr Meeke, were relatively innocuous while others were more obscene and at least one was extremely explicit.

The images had been downloaded between December 20 last year and January 24 this year, most of them at the beginning and end of that period.

Fifteen images were in one specific file, five in another while there were several thousand in the browser, although Mr Meeke said that he couldn't be sure Corbyn had looked at these.

Corbyn had tried to send five images to an e-mail address he had found while on an internet chat room. He failed the first time, on January 20, because he had the wrong address but he succeeded four days later.

Corbyn, who stepped down from his role as voluntary chairman of Wiltshire MIND after his arrest, told police he had been given the name of the internet site from which he downloaded the images, through the chat room.

Michael Richards, defending, drew Judge Cutler's attention to three reports that had been prepared, one by the Probation Service, one by Dr Godfrey of The Priory mental health centre, and one by Corbyn's own psychiatrist, Dr Paul Cohn.

Mr Richards said: "This sad case has led to the destruction of this man's life. It has affected him, the community he lives in and his role in the community."

He added that Corbyn's wife has stood by him.

Mr Richards told the court that Corbyn had begun suffering mental health difficulties in the early 1990s and, for the most part, his interest in images had been 'of the nature which many men of his age experience and enjoy'.

He said: "There is no evidence of violent tendencies towards younger people and no activities in respect of young people."

He said Corbyn indulged in fantasies which had arisen from incidents during his youth. He said there was no evidence of any desire on his part to participate and no interaction other than a passive one.

Most of the photographs were of passive, artistic poses and of not a particularly explicit nature, he said.

Mr Richards added that downloading the images had led to the computer crashing and Corbyn realised the images would be seen by staff at the store.

Judge Cutler told Corbyn that society was becoming more and more alarmed about the growing number of these offences, resulting in a recent rise in the maximum penalty for these offences from three years to ten years.

But he said he was aware of how much Corbyn had lost already his job, the good opinion of his friends and acquaintances. He was a man of previous good character who had given much to the community through charitable work.

He said that the photographs he had been shown in relation to this case were very far from the worst images he had had to view, mainly consisting of girls on their own without clothes.

But the name of the website from which the images had come, Ukrainian Angels, gave an indication of the true cost of the pictures.

Judge Cutler said: "Most of the girls who are used for this material are young girls from eastern Europe put there by their families as a way of earning money.

"What makes this so serious is this element of the victim."

But he declined to send Corbyn to prison, instead giving him a two-year community rehabilitation order, formerly known as probation, during which he will be required to attend the Thames Valley sex offender programme.

He has also been put on the sex offenders' register for five years.