Pervert revealed sexual fantasies to police officer
A former Halifax man has been jailed for 20 months after he revealed his perverted sex fantasies to an undercover police officer who infiltrated a paedophile chat room. When officers arrested Ian MacDonald, 48, in May last year they seized computer equipment containing more than 600 indecent images and movies of children and when he was quizzed by police he confessed to distributing the material to other paedophiles.
Judge Jonathan Rose told Macdonald: ”The possession of such images by paedophiles such as you, for that is what you are, is for one purpose only.
“It is to satisfy the perverted sexual longings of an adult for a child. To provide material by the use of which you gain sexual pleasure.”
Judge Rose said every child involved the images or movies had been directly abused and added: ”This is not a victimless crime.
“It is a crime in which, for your sexual pleasure, hundreds of children have been subjected to an offence which is known to the law as rape.”
The judge told MacDonald that the images would not be on the internet unless there was a market for them and the defendant had to share some responsibility for the abuse suffered by the children.
But Judge Rose said MacDonald’s offending was more serious because he had admitted distributing material to other perverted individuals.
“So you are responsible, Ian MacDonald, for spreading the misery and suffering of those children to others who will doubtless use them for their sexual pleasure and pass them on.”
Judge Rose said MacDonald had also spoken about his desire to engage in sexual activity with a child.
Jailing MacDonald, who now lives in York, the judge said the sentence was intended to demonstrate to other “men of perversion” that those involved in the making and distribution of such images would go to prison.
MacDonald, who had no previous convictions, admitted charges relating to the possession and distribution of indecent images at an earlier hearing before Calderdale magistrates and Bradford Crown Court heard that he had expressed remorse for his offending.
After reading references which spoke highly of MacDondald Judge Rose noted that the authors had been shocked by news of his crimes.
MacDonald will now be subject to an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and he must also register as a sex offender with the police of the next 10 years.