April 2016
OAP downloaded sickening videos of children as young as five
A pensioner used a proxy server to try and block his computer IP address while downloading hours of sickening child abuse videos and images of children as young as five, a court has heard.
John Coffin, 79, apologised to his wife when police arrived with a warrant to search his property on August 24 last year.
Coffin’s internet service provider contacted police to report child abuse images and videos being downloaded via peer to peer sharing on the web at his address, West Fen Drainside in Frithville, Boston Magistrates’ Court heard.
He was arrested and charged with three counts of possession of images and four counts of making indecent images.
The court was told that Coffin had 24 “Level A” child abuse videos, four “Level A” images, 15 “Level B” images and video footage and four “Level C”. “Level A” is considered to be the most serious of images and footage.
Prosecuting, Jim Claire, said: “There was hours and hours of video footage featuring children as young as five.
“Mr and Mrs Coffin were both present when police arrived and they both denied it.
“After the police explained why they were there he apologised to his wife. He had tried to hide his PC footprints so people could not see what he was doing.
“He was looking at the images before deleting them.
“His file sharing programme was assessed and child abuse websites were visited.
“He is of an age, elderly and the fact he was using peer to peer and proxy servers to hide what he was doing shows he had a good understanding of what he was doing.”
Mr Claire said the terms ‘child abuse’ had been searched for on the web.
Solicitor Anita Toll said Coffin was very remorseful.
“He is 79 and has never been before the courts before,” she said.
“He said it started out as curiosity and became out of hand.”
Coffin pleaded guilty to all charges.
The hearing was adjourned for a report to be put together by the probation services to find the best sentence for Coffin.
Magistrates told him he needed to register on the sex offenders register today.
He was granted conditional bail, not have any unsupervised contact with a child under 16 unless supervised by an adult, until the next hearing at Boston Magistrates’ Court on May 11 at 2pm.
