Doctor’s wife found stash of child abuse photos on his laptop
JUDGE PRAISES WOMAN’S COURAGE FOR REPORTING HUSBAND
A JUDGE praised a woman’s courage after she reported her husband to the police when she found sick images of children on his laptop.
She had borrowed her partner’s computer to watch Game of Thrones but instead made a horrific discovery, a court heard.
Now Dr Christopher Ball-Nossa, 35, from Chorlton, has admitted having had ‘inappropriate thoughts’ about children after first seeing such images when he himself was just a teenager.
The disgraced doctor, who was working at University Hospital in Coventry at the time, pleaded guilty to six charges of making (downloading) indecent images of children.
And at Warwick Crown Court, BallNossa was given a two-year community order with a rehabilitation activity and a condition of taking part in a sex offender programme.
Judge Peter Cooke also ordered him to register as a sex offender for ten years and made him subject to a sexual harm prevention order for the same period.
Prosecutor Anthony Cartin said that in June last year Ball-Nossa’s wife went to Coventry Central police station with his laptop, and raised a concern about the material he was accessing.
She said they had met in 2007, and the following year she had been working on her laptop while he was out when the battery died, so she decided to borrow his laptop to finish the work.
She discovered two images of an eight-year-old boy and a young girl on the computer, so confronted him about them – but accepted his explanation that they had been unwanted pop-ups.
They subsequently married, and by June last year he was working as a doctor at University Hospital in Walsgrave, Coventry.
On June 6 his wife wanted to use his laptop to watch Game of Thrones, and out of curiosity she decided to check whether he had deleted any of her photographs.
She explained that she backed up her pictures on his computer, but he had complained about the space they were taking up, so she wanted to make sure he had not got rid of any of them.
But when she went to the recycle bin she saw file names such as ‘child porn 3-16’ – and when she tried to open the image she had to select the option to restore the file. When she clicked on that, she got a message saying that in opening it she may be committing a criminal offence, and she got the same message when she tried to open other images, the court was told.
Having been handed his laptop, police officers arrested Ball-Nossa at work and seized a second laptop from his home, said Mr Cartin.
On the two laptops they found 1,528 indecent images, both stills and movies, of children aged from one to 13.
There were 22 movies and 196 stills in category A – the most severe and explicit grade of image. When Ball-Nossa was interviewed, he answered ‘no comment’ to officers’ questions. Richard Gibbs, defending, said: “This defendant was a doctor. He qualified two years ago, and was hoping to begin work as a GP. As a result of these offences, that career has gone. His marriage is also at an end, and the home he had shared with his wife is also something which will be lost to him in short order. “From something like the age of 17 he has had inappropriate thoughts about children. He makes clear he could and should have sought help for that many years ago.”
Mr Gibbs said a pre-sentence report suggested that Ball-Nossa, who is now living back in Manchester, had sought to minimise the offences, but that ‘he does understand that the viewing of these images creates the marketplace for their production.’
Sentencing Ball-Nossa, Judge Cooke told him: “The first thing I want to acknowledge is the conduct of your wife. It must have put her in the most appalling predicament, but she did the most courageous thing and went to the police. She found the courage to do the right thing.
“You also found the courage to do the right thing by admitting the offences.
“Your medical career is over, and your marriage is also over.” Judge Peter Cooke to Dr Christopher Ball-Nossa