Sports coach jailed over indecent images of children found on laptop
A sports coach who edited innocent pictures of schoolgirls to make it look like they were engaging in lewd acts with him has been jailed.
The doctored images were among hundreds of other indecent images of children Matthew Williams had downloaded onto his family laptop – where they were found by his wife.
She reported her discovery to the school where 59-year-old Williams worked as a sports coach and the police were contacted, Warwick Crown Court heard.
Williams, of Foundry Road, in Kingswinford, pleaded guilty to three charges of making indecent images of children.
He was jailed for eight months and ordered to register as a sex offender for ten years.
Mr Nicholas Berry, prosecuting, said the case concerned Williams' use of a computer, which was also used by his wife and two sons, over a period between July 2015 and December 2018.
The court heard his marriage had been under strain after he had had an affair, and in December 2018 his wife began to suspect that he was having another affair.
She checked their laptop and came across a file which could not be viewed without the use of a memory stick.
There was a memory stick by the laptop, and when she looked at its contents, she found at least two folders which contained thumbnail images of female children.
The images also had comments attached to them naming the children pictured by their correct names, Mr Berry said.
He was arrested at the family home, and the computer and memory stick were seized by police – who found more than 500 indecent images of children.
The images included seven in category A and 413 category B images.
Six of them were 'pseudo-images' in which innocent images of girls taken from legitimate sources had been doctored.
When interviewed, Williams admitted using photo-editing software to alter the pictures, for which he accepted there was a sexual motivation, Mr Berry added.
Mr Graeme Simpson, defending, said the offences came about at a time of a deteriorating relationship between Williams and his wife, and following his arrest he left their home in Warwickshire and was now living with his mother in Dudley borough, where he was originally from.
Mr Simpson said that Williams, who was now in another relationship, has been in contact with the Lucy Faithful Foundation, which works with sex offenders, and also receiving therapy from another organisation.
Sentencing Williams, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano, said: "You are here because of images your former wife found on your computer.
"Many of them were images of real children being abused sexually, but a small number were images that had been made by you of children you knew, or had come across through your work, which were made into sexualised images of them."
