Paedophile had 10,000 indecent child images
A‘ DESPICABLE ’ paedophile from Runcorn caught with around 10,000 child abuse images on his laptop has been given an extra year in prison just two months after he was convicted of molesting a mentally disabled adult.
Mark Theobold, 60, of Hazel Avenue, was already serving 45 months in prison when His Honour Judge Simon Berkson sentenced him to another 12 months behind bars plus a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) last Thursday at Chester Crown Court.
Theobold had pleaded guilty to five counts of making and possessing indecent or prohibited images of children.
These varied in severity between 9,295 Category C images he had and the 552 images of the worst type, classed as Category A.
Police discovered the vile trove of photographs and videos on Theobold’s laptop when they arrested him in 2016 as part of their investigation into accusations that Theobold had molested an adult, for which he went on to plead guilty to one charge of touching and three of sexual activity with a mentally disordered adult who could not consent. ●
Jeremy Rawson, representing Theobold, said his client’s offences were ‘wholly disgusting and unacceptable’, but referred to his guilty pleas and previous ‘good character’ at the time of his arrest that he had been hard-working and had cancer aged 25, which his last sentencing hearing heard had forced him to leave his job with chemical company ICI.
Judge Berkson branded Theobold’s offending ‘despicable’ and sentenced him to 12 months in prison to be served consecutively to the 45 months he is already serving, bringing the total to just under five years.
Sending him down, Judge Berkson said: “Those images in some cases were the worst type of child abuse images you could imagine that have been referred to in court today – Category A.
“What makes this worse than usual is eight were movies.
“You can therefore judge the length of time that those children were abused for adults like you to watch.
“These were despicable crimes.
He added: “For each of those images on you computer a child was abused and you were happy to watch, and there were a large number of images in this case.”
Theobold must also sign the sex offenders’ register for the next 10 years.