Paedophile jailed for sharing child abuse images online
A 50-year-old bachelor who distributed child pornography to other paedophiles has been locked up for eight months.
Michael O'Sullivan shared information and fantasies with them on an internet chat site as well as uploading the obscene images for them to see, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.
He was on holiday when police swooped on the home he shared with his sister and father in Abingdon Road, Bloxwich after a tip off on August 18 last year.
The officers were allowed into the house where they seized two lap tops from O'Sullivan's bedroom. Forensic examination revealed over 8,200 still images and 21 movies feature obscene pictures of children as young as five, said Mr Lal Amarasinghe, prosecuting. Over 750 of these were deemed to be in the two worst categories of pornography.
Investigators also discovered 187,000 other images that had been downloaded and then deleted. There were too many for them all to be checked but dip checks revealed at least some of these had also featured child pornography, continued the prosecutor.
Miss Anna Mackenzie, defending, said: "He takes full responsibility for his actions and makes no attempt to excuse what he has done."
O'Sullivan, who was of previous good character, admitted three charges of possession of indecent images of children and one of distribution images between April 2004 and July 2012 and was sent to prison by Judge Kristina Montgomery QC who told him:
"Police found a huge number of degrading, penetrative sexual acts involving children as young as five on your computer but it seems this was the tip of the iceberg as far as the material you had uploaded was concerned.
"You had also uploaded images for other paedophiles to see. Distribution of images of child pornography is so serious only an immediate sentence of imprisonment can be considered."
It remains unclear what category of pornography the uploaded images were from and so sentence was passed on the assumption that it had been the lowest level.
O'Sullivan will be on the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years and was made the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention order that will run for five years.
