January 2014
Serial sex offender escapes jail term
A SERIAL sex offender caught with more than 2,000 child sex images has avoided an immediate jail sentence.
Some of the images on Jason John West’s computer involved girls as young as three, Reading Crown Court heard on Friday, January 24.
The 39-year-old, of Church Road in Pamber Heath, whose previous convictions include having sex with a child and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, walked free from the dock after Judge Zoe Smith suspended his prison sentence.
This was to enable him to attend a sex offenders’ treatment programme for a second time, she said.
Jonathan Sank, prosecuting, said police raided West’s home in August 2012 and seized his computer, which was later found to contain 2,315 images of children, aged mainly from three to 13 years of age.
Eleven of the images were classed as Level Five – the most serious and disturbing category – the court heard.
Mr Sank said that police analysis of the computer revealed that West had entered terms such as “six-year-old nude girls” into the search engine.
West admitted one charge of making indecent photographs of children.
Mr Sank outlined West’s previous convictions including two instances of sexual intercourse with a girl aged under 13, for which he received a two year super-vision order in 1999.
A year later he received a 12- month jail sentence for three charges of indecent assault on a female aged under 16.
Four years later, in 2004, he was sentenced to a three-year community rehabilitation order for a charge of inciting a female under 16 to engage in sexual activity.
Russell Pyne, for West, reminded the court of West’s early admission of guilt and said his client suffered from depression and financial woes.
He added: “He has a job – he has been employed since moving into the area some 13 or 14 years ago, and in his opinion, it is to society’s benefit for him to continue in that job, to earn some money and give him something to do in the day.”
Mr Pyne said West had found a previous sex offenders’ treatment programme helpful and suggested this was a more useful option than prison.
Judge Smith said: “My concern is that although he found the previous programme helpful, it failed to prevent him re-offending – what’s to say this one will?”
Probation officers told Judge Smith that West was suitable for an intensive, two-year sex offenders’ treatment programme.
And Mr Pyne pointed out that his client had not breached his bail conditions in the two years since his arrest and that he used a library computer to access his emails, rather than a home computer.
Judge Smith sentenced West to 10 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, to allow him to attend the programme.
She also made West subject to a two-year supervision order and ordered him to pay £670 costs.
West’s computer hard drive was ordered to be destroyed.
