Grammar school boy who shared terror manuals online spared jail
A STAR pupil who shared neo-Nazi propaganda and bomb-making instructions was spared jail yesterday.
Grammar school boy Harry Vaughan, 18, whose father is a House of Lords clerk, also viewed child pornography.
But Vaughan, who boasted about school shootings and backed white supremacist groups after being radicalised in far-Right forums, avoided an immediate jail term at the Old Bailey yesterday.
He was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for two years, after he admitted terror charges and downloading indecent videos of children. The former pupil at Tiffin School in Kingston, south-west London, was ordered to attend a rehabilitation course and sign a terrorism register for ten years.
Counter-terror police raided his family’s home in Twickenham, west London, on June 19 last year as part of a probe into the online forum Fascist Forge, which refers to itself as ‘a home for the 21st century fascist’.
They found Vaughan had two posters in a rucksack in his bedroom bearing the slogans ‘It’s okay to be a Nazi’ and ‘Every girl loves a terrorist’. He had 128 other internet accounts, including one for System Resistance Network, a group that supports white supremacy and attacks immigration and gay rights. Vaughan, who achieved A* grades in his four A-levels, shared explosives manuals and neo-Nazi propaganda online.
Last year, when he was 16, he published three posts promoting the banned neo-Nazi group Sonnenkrieg Division.
An expert said the material he was viewing was ‘at the most extreme fringe of Satanism and neo-Nazism’ with ‘clear indications of racism’. The Fascist Forge site emphasises violent tactics, including the creation of terrorist cells.
A psychiatric report concluded that Vaughan had high-functioning autism and a ‘very pronounced difficulty in feeling, as well as expressing his own emotions’.
Vaughan told the author of a presentence report that the sexual offences were down to ‘curiosity and sexual excitement’. The report’s author concluded that Vaughan was a dangerous offender but judge Mr Justice Nigel Sweeney said his crimes were partly affected by his autistic spectrum disorder.
Vaughan, who wore a blue and white Fred Perry top, a remembrance poppy and a surgical mask, was supported in court by his father Jake, director of corporate services at the House of Lords.
He had earlier pleaded guilty to 12 counts of possessing documents useful for terrorism, one count of encouraging terrorism, one count of disseminating terrorist material and two counts of making indecent images of children.
Sentencing Vaughan, Mr Justice Sweeney told him: ‘You had been in a dark place at the age of 14
‘Clear indications of racism’
‘Susceptible to radicalisation’
when you began to be groomed on the internet. That said, however, there is no simple answer as to why you committed the offences.’
Senior counter- terror police warned parents that any young person could be radicalised by exposure to extremist ideology.
Richard Smith, head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command, said: ‘Harry Vaughan is an intelligent young man who... aspired to study computing at university. Yet online, he was an enthusiastic participant of Rightwing terrorist forums. He made and published vitriolic graphics encouraging terrorism.
‘His case illustrates it is possible for any young person to be susceptible to radicalisation.’