Red Arrows ex-pilot walks free over sex abuse images
An ex-Red Arrows pilot who was found with a large number of images and videos of child abuse has avoided jail after a judge said he accepted his ‘true remorse’.
Andrew Lloyd MBE, 59, formerly known as Andrew Cubin, had an ‘impeccable military background’ in a 20-year Royal Air Force career and flew fighter jets on 88 combat missions.
But the court heard he was sacked as a British Airways pilot after he previously admitted three counts of possessing indecent images of children, including 48 in the most serious category.
At his sentencing hearing at Swindon Crown Court yesterday, prosecutor Robert Welling said police attended Lloyd’s previous
‘Rightly regarded as appalling’
address in Crudwell, Wiltshire, in February last year after a tip-off about two indecent images being uploaded to the internet.
Officers seized a laptop and hard drive and forensic analysis revealed 48 category A child sexual abuse images, 39 from category B and ten in category C.
Lloyd told police he was searching for images of his daughter Hannah, 14, who died in his arms after a cardiac arrest in 2016.
He claimed she had uploaded photos of herself in her underwear at the request of a male online and he was on a ‘hopeless’ search to find the male.
But Mr Welling said his claims do not account for why he collected indecent images of underage boys and why the images had been kept in separate labelled folders on a hard drive.
nicholas Wragg, defending, said after Hannah’s death, Lloyd and his wife, who was sat in the public gallery, discovered the photos on her phone. He told the court Lloyd took it upon himself to search online for the person and as part of this had entertained trading images of other children.
Mr Wragg said Lloyd, now of Windsor, had undertaken ‘immense work’ after arrest, such as psycho-sexual counselling.
His Honour Judge Keith Cutler said his crimes are ‘rightly regarded as appalling and abhorrent in society’ but accepted his ‘true remorse’. He handed Lloyd a 36-month community order, including a sexual offending programme and 20 rehabilitation activity requirement days, and a five-year sexual harm order.