Former school head jailed over pornographic images of children (From Gazette & Herald)

Former school head jailed over pornographic images of children

5:56pm Monday 23rd April 2012 in News By Megi Rychlikova, megi.rychlikova@thepress.co.uk

A “DEVIOUS” former headmaster has been jailed for his haul of pornographic images of children, after he fooled a judge into letting him off part of an earlier sentence.

Colin Robert Wilmshurst, now 71, was given a three-year community order with a sex offenders’ treatment programme in 2008 after police found sexual internet clips of children on his computer, included a sedated and blindfolded girl being abused.

In August 2010, a probation officer supervising him successfully applied for the order to be ended early by writing a report that Wilmshurst had come to terms with the past that led to his interest in child pornography and was unlikely to reoffend.

But earlier this year at York Crown Court, Wilmshurst admitted four charges of downloading child pornography, one of possessing child pornography and one of possessing prohibited pornographic drawings of children between March and August 2010. Both sets of offences included hardcore pornography.

His barrister Taryn Turner pleaded for him to get a sentence that would allow him to keep his liberty.

But the judge was the same judge who sentenced him in 2008 and reduced his punishment in 2010, the Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst.

He said: “Having experience of your devious behaviour doesn’t fill me with great confidence that you would necessary comply with such an order.”

Wilmshurst, who was charged under the name Wilmhurst in 2008, now of Willow Court, Recreation Road, Pickering, was jailed for nine months and given a ten-year sexual offences prevention order that will prevent him using the internet unless he uses a computer with specially installed software that will automatically notify the police if he accesses child pornographic websites. He will also be on the sex offenders’ register for ten years.

Prosecuting, Tom Storey said police found adult sado-masochistic images including rape, mutilation and torture of women and written stories of child abuse on Wilmshurst’s computer memory sticks as well as 19 mostly soft-pornography child images and 126 prohibited child abuse drawing and cartoons.

Mrs Turner said Wilmshurst was using the child pornography to research a book which would help him deal with being abused as a child at a private school.

The court heard there was no evidence Wilmshurst had ever himself sexually abused any child in his care.