Shamed GP is jailed for haul of child porn
May 31 2008 The Journal
A DISGRACED former GP was jailed yesterday for hoarding child pornography. Dr Kevin Griffiths, 49, was arrested when police raided his surgery.
Officers seized computer equipment from the busy practice at Palmer Community Hospital, Jarrow, South Tyneside, last June.
When that was analysed by experts, the GP’s collection of paedophile pictures was uncovered.
The married father of one, who resigned after the raid and is no longer in practice, had been downloading images from the internet for almost two years. Jailing him for a year, Judge Esmond Faulks said Griffiths had downloaded 362 indecent images and films, nine of which were of child bondage and rape.
“Those images were of the vilest nature,” he said. “This is a tragic and dramatic fall from grace for a man in your position. You are an intelligent man and recognise the error of what you have done.”
He said Griffiths, who is an alcoholic, would never practise as a doctor again.
The former GP, originally from Wallsend but now living in London, pleaded guilty at Newcastle Crown Court to possessing 362 indecent photographs of children.
He further admitted 12 specimen charges of making those images between May 2005 and February last year.
Prosecuting, Neil Pallister said the indecent images were discovered when a partner at the medical practice checked the contents of a computer memory stick he found on Griffiths’s office desk.
“He had been concerned about Griffiths’s performance,” Mr Pallister said. “Patients’ records had been going missing and had not been kept up to date, and he had smelled alcohol on Griffiths’s breath. He wanted to see what he had been doing with his time.”
When detectives arrived at Griffiths’s home, he said: “I know what this is about. I will make it easy for you,” and led them to a computer in his office on which images had been stored.
He told police: “I am glad now it is out in the open. I might get some help.”
Mitigating, Robert Woodcock said Griffiths’s alcoholism had acted as a disinhibitor which had contributed to his offending.
“He had already recognised he had a number of serious problems and had been seeking help.”
Griffiths was made subject of a sex offenders’ sexual offences prevention order, ordered to sign on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years, and banned from working with children for life. The judge ordered his computers be destroyed.
