Man jailed over 3million porn images

Date published: 10 January 2012

AN OLDHAM man who became addicted to pornography, was found to have a staggering three million images stored on his computer, a court was told.

Kris Hardman (37) had so many indecent and vile pictures downloaded to his hard drive, that police were able to view only a fraction of them.

Jailing him for ten months, judge Peter Laking told him: “On any view, you had a huge number of such images.

“For the protection of the public, and particularly children, the courts must make clear that offences of this type cannot and will not be tolerated.

“For every indecent image and for every indecent video of a child, there will be a child victim.

“Day in and day out, children are sexually abused to feed this market of indecent images for people like you.”

Lisa Boocock prosecuting, had told Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court that police had gone to Hardman’s address on Middleton Road, Royton, on November 24, 2010, armed with a warrant following intelligence that he had accessed extreme porn.

He immediately admitted what he had been doing, and told officers he spent up to five hours a day viewing such vile pictures on the internet.

The court was told that there were so many that around 2.8 million of the images could not be viewed.

Of those that were, more than 61,000 were still and moving pictures graded at the lowest level one, 65 at level two, 76 at level three, 77 at level four, and 56 still images at the highest level five.

They ranged from still poses involving young females to pictures of young girls aged 11-13 involved in sex acts with males, and others involving bondage pictures of girls aged as young as ten.

The court was told that there were in addition, 231 images classed as extreme porn, including pictures of women with animals.

Mark Fireman defending, said Hardman had been extremely frank with police officers when confronted with what he had done.

He said he admitted that he got a form of sexual gratification from looking at the pictures, that he did not get from actual relationships.

Mr Fireman said: “It appears that people can become immune to pornography, and start looking for more and more extreme images to feed their addiction.”

He said his client had expressed remorse for what he had done, and shown a willingness to overcome the addiction.

Hardman had pleaded guilty to 16 offences of making indecent images; five offences of possessing indecent images, and six offences of possessing extreme pornographic images.

He was told he will serve half his ten-month sentence in custody, and the remainder on licence.

He has been disqualified from working with children indefinitely, and will be subject to the Sexual Offences Prevention Order for ten years.