Jailed for child sex images

Jun 21 2008 by Neil Mckay, The Journal

THE owner of a popular market town bookshop was behind bars last night for owning and distributing thousands of indecent images of children.

Durham Crown Court heard that some of the images discovered in the possession of Philip Webb, 53, included toddlers and babies involved in sexual activity with adults, and even images of very young children involved in scenes of sadism and bestiality.

Police raided his shop, All Things Books on The Bank, Barnard Castle, County Durham, on December 20 last year and he immediately complied with the investigation, handing over discs and saying: “This is what you are looking for.”

Presiding judge Richard Lowden dismissed Webb’s claim that he possessed and distributed the images to try to flush out other paedophiles. He said: “I cannot accept that you intended to flush out other paedophiles and notify the relevant authorities, because that simply has not happened.”

Married Webb, 53, a father of two, had earlier admitted the possession of 36,265 indecent images of children.

He also admitted distributing hundreds of images of children ranging from level one to level five – the worst category.

He appeared for sentencing yesterday, where the judge told him that an aggravating factor of his offending was the tender age of children on the images.

“A vast number of images which were seized related to very young children, indeed babies. A very large number of the most serious category of images – level five – involved very young children.

“I cannot accept that you have no sexual interest in children.”

The judge said Webb had also used an internet chatroom to reveal fantasies of raping, asphyxiating and murdering children for sexual gratification.

Nathan Adams, representing Webb, said his client had worked with children and young people for 30 years, including as a Scout leader and working in a remand centre, without “any evidence of anything untoward”.

But the judge sentenced him to three years, three months imprisonment, although 69 days he has spent on remand in custody already will be taken off his sentence.

He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for life, and banned from using a computer, unless in a workplace or a public library, for 30 years.