Voyeur also had child porn pics

A pervert shared photos he had taken of a naked woman on the internet and hid the originals on his own computer alongside indecent images of children.
Newton outside courtNewton outside court
Newton outside court

Mark Newton hid the images on his laptop in a folder innocuously called “Golf Weekend” but after police raided his Wigan home a forensic expert uncovered his dark secrets.

A judge told 43-year-old Newton that the voyeurism charges involving the woman were the most serious but after hearing that she has forgiven him he decided to suspend a jail term on him.

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He sentenced him to a total of 15 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years and ordered him to carry out 240 hours’ unpaid work. He also placed him under supervision for two years with attendance on a sex offenders’ rehabilitation programme.

Judge Neil Flewitt, QC, ordered him to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years and imposed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for the same length of time.

He said that Newton had downloaded and viewed the indecent images of children aged between eight and 13 between March 2010 and 2013.

“The evil that lies behind these offences is that by creating a market for the consumption of such images you contribute and encourage the abuse of these children. Each of these images viewed by you for your own gratification involved the sexual abuse of a young child.”

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Newton, of Croyde Close, Hindley Green, pleaded guilty to five offences of voyeurism and three of possessing child porn images in all three categories of seriousness. A further 17 charges involving downloading indecent images were dropped.

He only pleaded guilty on the day his trial was due to start, which was the third attempt to have a trial, and Judge Flewitt said he would have ordered him to pay the substantial prosecution costs but Newton, who was declared bankrupt, is not working.

The judge added, “I am very sceptical about your remorse in the pre-sentence report which is entirely inconsistent with the way you have conducted yourself throughout the proceedings.”

Trevor Parry-Jones, prosecuting, said police raided Newton’s home in August 2013 armed with a search warrant and electronic items were seized. When his laptop was examined and the child porn was found officers returned to arrest him and he said, “That’s it, I am going to lose everything.”

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When interviewed he claimed to be the victim of identity theft which he had reported to police, though inquiries found no such report. “He said he was self-employed and had a number of random staff who each had access to his laptop.”

The court heard that as the investigations continued the forensic expert had access to new software and this led to the discovery of the voyeurism images and he was then arrested for those offences. “He had created a library of indecent images of children, many in a file called Golf Weekend. On the face of it an innocuous file but when the thread was followed the file was found with a large number of images including images of older females,” said Mr Parry-Jones.

The court heard the indecent images offences involved a total of 23 images with four in the most serious category.

Computer chat logs were examined and these revealed he had been trading images of the naked woman, who had not known she had been photographed, for other images.

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Mr Parry-Jones said that after his behaviour came to light “he buried his head in the sand and came up with every excuse in the book.”

Ben Jones, defending, said that Newton, who has no previous convictions, has been forgiven by the woman, who featured in 10 naked pictures, in the voyeurism charges.

“He has been brought low by his own behaviour,” he said. He had always been involved “in one business or another” but had been declared bankrupt and relied financially on his wife, a hairdresser.

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