October 2014
Police searching for missing person find convicted child rapist at Hull flat with indecent pictures of boys
A CONVICTED paedophile was caught with 257 indecent images of children while police were looking for a missing person.
Officers visited Keith Mair’s flat in Hutt Street, west Hull, on March 25, during a missing persons inquiry.
They found him in possession of a laptop, which he was barred from having under the terms of a sexual offences prevention order.
Analysis of the computer revealed he had downloaded a total of 257 indecent images of children.
The photographs were all of boys aged between nine and 14.
There were a total of 61 images rated as Category A – the most serious – 46 at Category B and 147 at Category C.
Mair, 63, admitted nine counts of possessing indecent images of children.
Hull Crown Court heard that in January 2002, Mair, who was then aged 51, was sentenced to 12 years in jail at Grimsby Crown Court for five offences of buggery and seven indecent assaults. All the victims were boys under 16.
Stephen Welch, prosecuting, said Mair had served the full 12 years because he “denied culpability of causing serious harm to children”.
Joanna Golding, representing Mair, said he had bought the laptop for “poetry writing”.
Mrs Golding said: “He was released in January and it was the first sense of freedom he had for 12 years.
“The whole IT world had changed and he bought the laptop and downloaded the images.”
Recorder Eric Elliott QC asked her: “What possessed him to buy the laptop?”
Mrs Golding replied: “He saw it as a freedom that he thought he had.
“He does poetry writing, things like that, and bought it for a genuine purpose.”
But she said Mair now fully accepted what he had done was wrong and wanted help to change.
“He said to me, ‘one image is one image too many’ and I really don’t think it can be put any better,” she said.
“For the first time I think ever, this defendant realises that he needs help. This is a man who said to me today, ‘I could not bear going back into custody’.”
The judge said he accepted the findings of a pre-sentence report, which said that Mair was willing and able to address his offending, and sentenced him to a three-year community order that will allow him to complete the Northumbria Sex Offenders Treatment Programme.
Explaining his decision, the judge told Mair: “The author of the probation report has made it clear that he is in no doubt at all that you now acknowledge, finally, that you do have a problem with viewing images of young children, and that you are willing and anxious to address that problem.
“Accordingly, it seems to me that a sentence should be passed that can harness your resolve and harness your acceptance of that problem, and by that way serve the public interest.”
