A Brighton man has been charged with having child porn on his computer despite a previous court order aimed at preventing him from storing pictures of children being sexually abused.
Terence George Coomber, 78, of Stanford Avenue, Brighton, appeared before Brighton magistrates yesterday (Thursday 30 May).
Coomber, who faced 11 charges, was sent for trial at Lewes Crown Court on Friday 26 July.
He was accused of having more than 6,600 pornographic pictures of children, including almost 1,500 “category A” images – the most serious on a scale of A to C.
One of the charges alleges that Coomber had an “extreme pornographic image portraying … in an explicit and realistic way, a person performing sexual acts with animals and which was grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character”.
He was accused of breaching two clauses of a “sexual harm prevention order” which was imposed by a crown court judge three years ago.
Coomber is said to have installed software capable of deleting his internet browsing history, which he was forbidden to do by the order.
And he was accused of having had a computer or device capable of accessing the internet without recording his browsing history, again, in breach of the order.
The order was imposed after Coomber appeared in court in 2016 and admitted similar offences dating from 2010 to 2015 in relation to more than 2,400 images.
The latest offences are alleged to have taken place in May and December last year.
He was remanded on unconditional bail.
Please re-think your wording. There is no such thing as child ‘porn’ only child abuse images.
Here’s a dictionary definition of pornography: Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate sexual excitement.
Sadly, child pornography – or to use the common shorthand – child porn is prevalent. I agree that, by its very nature, child porn involves child abuse. Respectfully, I’d rather report the issue using language in popular usage that anyone can understand and focus on what really matters than fudge it or focus on secondary considerations. It’s too important an issue to trivialise with some silly semantic debate.
The legal term is indecent images of children. While I appreciate your reasoning for using the term child porn it minimises the fact that a child is abused to obtain every image. Minimising is one step away from normalising.
Dawn, here’s what the law actually says …
The Protection of Children Act 1978
1.– (1) Subject to sections 1A and 1B, it is an offence for a person–
(a) to take, or permit to be taken or to make, any indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child; or
(b) to distribute or show such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs; or
(c) to have in his possession such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs, with a view to their being distributed or shown by himself or others; or
(d) to publish or cause to be published any advertisement likely to be understood as conveying that the advertiser distributes or shows such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs or intends to do so.
Dawn, even your version is a form of shorthand, minimising what the law says and the fact that children are abused to obtain pornographic photographs or pseudo-photographs. By your own logic you are one step away from normalising child pornography and child abuse. Of course, your logic is as flawed as the behaviour of the Rochdale social workers and police officers who prioritised other matters over the protection of children. It’s a form of distraction from the most important matter at hand.
There’s nothing wrong with using language that can be understood by everyone. Prescriptive terminology is redolent of Big Brother in 1984 and has no place in a free society. Perhaps you should stick to academic law journals if you want arcane linguistic phraseology. I, for one, value the reporting on this news website because it tends to be clear, concise and, so far as I am aware, relatively accurate. There are bigger fish to fry than small-minded quibbles over trends in vocabulary.
What about the Brighton social worker caught with a huge amount of child abuse pictures on his home computer in 2017! Dawn Evans don’t mention him does she.