Computer programmer jailed for downloading child and animal porn images

Jeffrey Tilby was today (Feb 5) jailed for eight months after a judge rubbished his claims that he had clicked on the animal and child sex images accidentally. The balding 57-year-old hanged his head in the dock as a judge said he had tried to “hoodwink” the court with outdated computer knowledge to cover up his crimes.

“I think the images you come across tend to be adverts,” the bespectacled programmer claimed. “They had a link and that would take you into child porn.”

Tilby, of Ireland Close, Browns Wood, Milton Keynes, blamed bulk downloads from porn sites for the content and said in order to view the amateur porn he was aroused by, he had to use less secure sites, which were liable to hacking.

Stephen Willmer, prosecuting, asked: “Does it then follow that there’s likely to be some sort if epidemic of adults looking for adult porn who find there are downloads of child porn on their computers?”

Tilby, appearing at Aylesbury Crown Court, replied: “I can’t comment on other people but I certainly found it myself.”

Quizzed as to how he could have stumbled on more than 2,000 images and clips showing bestiality, Tilby admitted he had occasionally searched for debauched animal porn.

Some of the material he viewed showed women having sex with snakes and dogs, but he said: “I was sort of looking for images where women were emotionally involved.”

Judge Francis Sheridan said: “What on earth are you talking about when you say you’re looking for emotional women?

How does that lead to animal porn, sex with snakes or dogs? What sort of emotions are you looking for?”

Tilby said: “Most of the time it’s Brazilian women doing it for money but you sometimes get women who are turned on by it.”

He earlier admitted four counts of making indecent images of a child and one count of possessing extreme pornography showing sex with a dead or alive animal.

Detectives found he had downloaded 2,024 images of extreme animal porn and over 1,000 child sex images - all of which had been deleted from his computer by the time he was investigated.

Of the child abuse images, 112 images were in category A, showing rapes and the most serious abuse, 177 were category B and 765 were category C.

Simon Smith, defending, said his client was a “sad” individual who had no previous convictions and would benefit from a programme to help offenders work through their issues.

“This gentleman could be described as a sad and socially isolated individual,” he told the court.

“He is now aware of the severity of his behaviour and that the authorities are aware of him.”

However Judge Sheridan gave Tilby’s excuses short shrift and pointed to the horrific nature of the clips of children that had been wiped from his hard-drive.

He said it was up to a judge to get a “flavour for the defendant’s particular interest in children” and he said Tilby had downloaded graphic content showing girls as young as five being raped.

Some of the vile material also showed children, aged just seven years, engaging in threesomes and babies being abused, while another showed a 12-year-old girl being raped by an elderly man.

Judge Sheridan said: “This defendant has got some skills with computers and he’s hoping to use an out-of-date knowledge of how the internet works to say that this is an accident.

“I don’t believe that for a minute. The more and more he is pressed the more obvious it becomes he’s relying on outdated understanding in the hope he can hoodwink the court into believing that they [child and animal porn images] all popped up accidentally.

“It seems to have popped up ‘inadvertently’ hundreds of times. I reject completely that they inadvertently popped up. It absolutely defies the way the web works.

“He’s deluding himself or he’s set out to delude me.”

He said that while Tilby posed no direct threat to children, they had been harmed remotely by the people who abused them in order to provide such content.

Judge Sheridan added: “This sort of conduct is totally unacceptable.

“There’s only one way the world can defeat the abuse of children and that is for courts to pass a sentence saying it is unacceptable. They do so with the support of all rational thinking.”

Tilby was jailed for a total of eight months. He was made subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order and placed on the Sex Offender’s Register, both for 10 years.