Court told of child images on councillor’s laptop
BOYS BELIEVED to be as young as seven featured in indecent images found on a laptop of a Hull councillor which was seized by police, a court heard.
Steven Bayes is on trial at Hull Crown Court and denies two counts of making indecent photographs of children and one of possessing extreme pornographic images. The court was given details of some of the indecent images and films found on the laptop, which all involved young boys performing sexual acts, some with adults.
It was told six of the extreme pornographic images, which involved adults and animals, were in a sub-folder called Despicable, in a file entitled Steven Pictures.
Of the extreme images, 27 had come from a full backup from an iPad, and seven others from a partial backup from a different iPad, neither of which were recovered. There were ‘selfies’ of Mr Bayes taken with a tablet computer, including himself in bed. There was also a large amount of adult pornography.
In a police interview Mr Bayes admitted sometimes “coming across” indecent images on the internet. Asked whether he had a sexual interest in children, he said: “No, not at all.”
Mr Bayes said he gave one iPad back to the Co-op after stopping working for it in May 2014 and another to a friend in August 2016, adding: “I’d rather not get them involved in this.”
He was asked about why he chose a Twitter handle Satan666Lord. Mr Bayes said it was “eyecatching” and it had been his objective at the time to get 10,000 followers. He said others had the password to his Twitter account, including men in Mexico, Australia and Italy, to do translations and “share the workload.” Earlier his defence barrister Richard Thompson put it to digital forensic analyst Matthew CarverSmith that “in relation to all these images you are not able to assist us how they got there other than by backup to a computer. You can’t tell us how they got to the iPad, you can’t tell us if they have been viewed and if so by who.”
Mr Carver-Smith answered: “Correct.” The trial continues.