January 2015
Whitby man jailed for five years for child sex crimes
A Whitby man has been jailed for five years after making thousands of indecent images of children and inciting a young boy to rape his sister.
Former military man Simon Abbott (27) exchanged indecent images with the teenage boy over the internet and urged the youngster to sexually abuse his younger sibling.
During a six-year period between 2007 and 2013, Abbott, of Elgin Street, Whitby, downloaded 30,175 indecent images and videos of children, many of them extreme in nature and some of which he sent to the named boy, who lived in Wiltshire.
Abbott was arrested in February 2013 and charged a year later with 24 counts of making and distributing indecent images. In police interview, the ex-army trainee told officers: “I’ve screwed everything up.”
He appeared for sentence at York Crown Court on Wednesday after admitting the 24 original charges as well as four sexual-incitement charges dating back to the summer of 2012.
Abbott admitted encouraging the boy to rape his sister in June 2012 and inciting him to make indecent pictures of children between July and August of the same year. He was arrested after Wiltshire Police traced the exchange of pornographic images.
Prosecutor, Mark Styles, said Abbott had been using a web address under a fictional name, from which dozens of extreme child-indecent images were sent to the youngster in Wiltshire.
Police in North Yorkshire searched Abbott’s home and seized computer equipment which contained a staggering amount of vile images featuring young boys and girls.
Abbott was arrested at his army barracks in Catterick and immediately owned up to sending and receiving horrific images of children to and from other internet users via a website based in Russia.
Mr Styles said that between June and July 2012, Abbott exchanged a number of sick online messages with the boy in Wiltshire, who was given a referral order by the youth court for his own part in the twisted sex-fantasy game.
Abbott encouraged him to take indecent photos of his sister and said he would pay him for it. There was also a conversation about them meeting up at their respective homes and the boy charging money for sexual favours, although neither this nor any sex crimes against the boy’s sister were ever carried out.
Defence barrister Taryn Turner said his army career was over and Abbott had “no intention whatsoever” of turning his sick fantasy world of child sex into reality.
However, Recorder Benjamin Nolan QC said Abbott had “gorged himself” on indecent photos of children for many years.
He added there was a real risk that the impressionable young boy could have enacted the defendant’s twisted exhortations to rape his sister.
He sentenced Abbott to five years in prison and imposed an indefinite sexual offences prevention order. Abbott was also placed on the sex-offenders’ register indefinitely.
