Sex offender spared jail as police find sickening images
A sex offender caught with sickening child abuse images on his computer devices has kept his freedom.
Mark Robson, who has a previous conviction for engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, had three illegal movies and pictures featuring victims estimated to be between the ages of 12 and 16.
The 49-year-old also had a collection of 512 prohibited images.
Newcastle Crown Court heard Robson's home was raided by the police in June 2018 after they alerted to illegal images being shared over Whatsapp.
Prosecutor Vince Ward told the court: "Police had intelligence that peer to peer software was being used by an IP address associated with the defendant.
"It had been used to share indecent images of children and images of beastiality between June 5, 2017 and May 29, 2018."
The court heard that when police carried out a morning raid at Robson's home they seized internet equipment and found the illegal images.
Robson, of Waskerley Road, Barmston, Washington, admitted having two category A moving images, which is the most serious category of their type and one category B still image, plus 512 prohibited images.
Jamie Adams, defending, said: "This man has spent far too much time by himself in the last few years, probably and ironically brought about by his offending in the past and causing him to be something of a recluse from society, which doesn't help."
Mr Recorder Craig Hassall told the court that Robson's previous conviction, which was 10 years ago, was a "worrying factor".
He added: "The police came to your home because of intelligence material they had been given about the sharing of indecent images of children and extreme pornography through Whatsapp.
"They seized a number of items of computer hardware from your house and found a number of illegal images."
Robson was sentenced by the judge to a community order for three years with programme and rehabilitation requirements and ordered to do 80 hours unpaid work.
The court ordered that he must abide by the terms of a sexual harm prevention order and sign the sex offenders register for the next five years.
Staff at Washington’s ASDA warehouse were left feeling “bullied” and “humiliated” according to a trade union after employees received letters to their homes asking for performance improvement.
Employees at Washington’s ASDA distribution warehouse were asked for an improvement to their work performance after the depot overspent on warehouse performance costs.
One staff member achieved an average of more than 88% of their target but bosses asked that they “see an immediate improvement” in their performance and anotherwithanaverageof99%oftarget was asked to make “a little extra effort”.
Mick Hopper, the regional organiser for GMB, said that a number of covid cases on the site and social distance regulations have made it “impossible” for employees to fulfil performance targets.
The Echo understands managers at the depot will be “reviewing downtime” and workers who continually “under-perform”willbespokento before performance management processes begin.
Mick Hopper said: "I’m disgustedthatbossesfeeltheneed to send letters to people’s private homes about figures not beingachievedwhenwe’reina pandemicthatthesekeyworkers have worked throughout.”
He added: “We have some staffhitting85-99%oftheirtargets – we’re talking about people
not robots.
"These employees are working through a pandemic
and some are homeschooling alongside all this and and now they’re being told they could be getting disciplined or spokentobecausethepickfigures aren’t where they’re supposed to be – it’s disgusting.”
The Washington warehouse establish their performance targets on the National Recognition Agreement in 2012 which the trade union say was based on another depot nine years ago.
An ASDA spokesperson said: “We’re constantly looking at how we can improve in partnership with our colleagues – and measuring performance closely is standard practicewithinwarehouseenvironments.
"We have commended colleagues who have hit their targets and highlighted where improvements are needed withothers.Theseletterswere sentasafollow-uptoindividual discussions, but we recognise the language used could have been better and we are addressing this.”