Jailed for vile images as judge calls his vigilante claim ‘nonsense’:
PERVERT’S CLAIM HE WAS WEB VIGILANTE ‘OBVIOUS NONSENSE’ - JUDGE
A VILE pervert with a collection of extreme child abuse images was yesterday jailed for three years.
Carl Thomas Morgan’s hoard of pictures and videos was so extreme it included pictures of necrophilia.
Morgan’s vile stash contained over 150,000 images and videos - so many that police gave up counting.
Of the 956 images that were analysed, 337 were placed in the worst category. Many showed girls aged from newborn to 15 in “extreme distress” being abused.
Rhys Rothwell, prosecuting, said analysis of the material showed Morgan’s “enjoyment of necrophilia, paedophilia and rape,” Mold Crown Court heard.
He said Morgan, 28, of Garth Road, Bangor also had an interest in familial sex abuse as well as children being abused while intoxicated or drugged.
Some images also contained animals.
Outlining the case, Mr Rothwell said in November 2018 the social media site Kik Messenger reported that users in a private group had shared a number of videos “depicting serious child abuse”.
An “indecent” 13-second clip had been shared by a user called TheTitch00 - the IP addresses of which were traced back to Morgan’s home in Cornwall and to his university address in Bangor.
Police executed a search warrant at the Bangor address and seized Morgan’s phone and laptop.
During police interview following his arrest, he admitted being TheTitch00 and accepted he’d uploaded the image, but claimed he was part of a vigilante group searching the dark web for evidence to catch paedophiles.
Mr Rothwell said: “He said he knew what he was doing was illegal but was willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.”
But Morgan said he’d accidentally deleted all information about the vigilante group some months beforehand, the prosecution added.
During a second interview, Morgan denied any sexual interest in children and said he’d been “intrigued from a medical perspective” about some of the more extreme images and was “curious about human nature and its ability to participate in such behaviour”.
He pleaded guilty to seven charges including one of distributing an indecent image, three of making indecent images, one of possessing prohibited images and two of possessing extreme images.
In his defence, the court heard how Morgan had no previous convictions and “there was no suggestion of any attempt to make contact with any child”.
The offences had dated back “quite some time” and there had been no further offending since Morgan was arrested.
Sentencing him to three years in jail, Judge, Timothy Petts said: “Everyone who searches for, downloads and shares such images plays their part in the abuse of children.
“The effect of such behaviour towards a child is almost certain to be lifelong and immeasurable.”
The judge said Morgan’s account to the police about the vigilante group was “obvious nonsense”.
Morgan was also made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order and ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for life.