Suspended sentence for lonely man who downloaded horrific child abuse images

A 55-year-old Warrington man who was found with horrific child abuse images including young babies being assaulted, has received a suspended prison sentence.

Police went to Ian Mairs home in Mayberry Grove, Poulton-with-Fearnhead in February last year and seized his electronic items.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that these included three phones, a hard drive and a laptop and child abuse images in all three categories of seriousness were found after they were forensically examined.

Iain Criddle, prosecuting, said that investigations also revealed 10 extreme porn images involving bestiality.
“Chat was recovered from his phone where he was talking to another adult about the sexual abuse of female children,” he said.
When arrested and interviewed he made admissions but the court heard that he did not admit having any sexual interest in children. Judge David Swinnerton said he did not accept that and if the defendant maintained that he would have to give evidence.

His lawyer, Jim Smith, said that Mairs did not wish to do that.
The defendant pleaded guilty to possessing a total of 35 child abuse images, downloading those images and possessing the extreme pornographic photographs. The offences occurred in March last year.
Mr Smith said that Mairs had pleaded guilty and was of effective good character. He explained that at the offences he had been under tremendous stress.
He not only lost his father, whom he had moved in with to look after, but his partner of ten years, a hospital worker in Ireland, died from Covid. He was “lonely and isolated.”
Mr Smith said that he told police when they arrived at his home that they would find unlawful material. He would benefit from therapy, he added.

Judge Swinnerton, who described some of the images as “particularly bad”, sentenced him to 12 months imprisonment suspended for two years.
He also ordered him to carry out 200 hours unpaid work and 30 rehabilitation activity days. Mairs has to sign on the Sex Offenders Register for ten years and a Sexual Harm Prevention Order was imposed for the same period of time.