Judge issues warrant for arrest of Brighton sex offender

A judge has issued a warrant for the arrest of a sex offender from Brighton who was due to appear in court today (Thursday 4 April).

Terence George Coomber, 83, of Stanford Avenue, Brighton, failed to appear at Lewes Crown Court where he faced a charge of breaching a sexual harm prevention order.

Terence Coomber is accused of installing software on a laptop that was “capable of performing a wiping function” in contravention of the sexual harm prevention order which was imposed in November 2019.

Coomber is alleged to have installed the software at some point late last year – from Sunday 22 October to Friday 3 November.

He was due to be sentenced for breaching the order but, in his absence, Judge Martin Huseyin issued a bench warrant, not backed for bail.

It is not the first time that Coomber has been due before the courts for breaching a sexual harm prevention order.

The latest order was imposed after he was caught with more than 6,600 child porn images on his computer and USB sticks in 2018.

Coomber saved the pictures of children being abused despite a previous conviction and court order prohibiting him from having such material.

In November 2019 he was jailed for 38 months after pleading guilty to 11 charges. He admitted having almost 1,500 of the most serious type of images, showing children – some very young – being sexually abused.

In another of the offences, Coomber had an extreme pornographic image portraying a person performing sexual acts with animals.

Coomber was ordered to register as a sex offender for life.

The earlier sexual harm prevention 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.

After Coomber was jailed in 2019, PC David Muddle, from the Brighton team responsible for monitoring convicted sex offenders in the community, spoke out.

PC Muddle said: “Coomber’s latest offending, a flagrant breach of court decisions, began to come to light when we made a routine visit to his flat last year. He had installed software capable of deleting his internet browsing history.

“Throughout our subsequent inquiries and forensic examinations, which revealed the evidence despite his efforts to conceal it, he denied any responsibility for what we found, including a USB stick which was found hidden in a bag underneath his kitchen sink.

“Coomber clearly decided to pursue his vile sexual interests despite his previous conviction and although there is no evidence that any of the images, taken from the internet, were of local children, each image was of a child being sexually abused.”