A 22-YEAR-OLD with Asperger's syndrome who downloaded "revoltingpornographic pictures" of children at Hayle library has avoided animmediate prison sentence.
William Moreland, of Clifton Terrace, Hayle, admitted 18allegations involving the making and possessing of indecent imagesat Truro Crown Court. He also admitted breaching his Sexual OffencesPrevention Order, imposed in February last year after he accessedpornographic websites from a college library.
The court heard Moreland was caught when a member of staffresponsible for monitoring internet access at Hayle library alertedthe police and his home was searched.
His laptop computer was seized and 1,000 images of extremepornography were found, together with 159 at the lowest scale ofseriousness, 202 at level two, 78 at level three and 61 at levelfour - one below the highest level. Many were of young boys.
Moreland told police: "I can't help myself. I was very good for afew months but I just started doing it again, I don't know why."
Paul Gallagher, for the defence, pointed out that Morelandsuffered from Asperger's syndrome. He also said he had been doingextremely well on an Internet Sex Offenders' Programme (Isop).
Sentencing Moreland, Mr Justice Butterfield said he shouldcontinue on the programme hoping that eventually he would resist hisdesire to access these "revolting pictures".
The judge was also surprised filters had not been installed onthe public computers and asked prosecutor Philip Lee to requestthose responsible for libraries to install the devices.
Moreland was given a ninemonth prison sentence, suspended for twoyears, with supervision throughout and a requirement to continue onthe Isop programme and sign the Sex Offenders' Register for the nextten years.
Cornwall Council said its library service has an acceptable usepolicy in place which all library computer users must agree tobefore being allowed access to browse the internet.
A spokesman said: "It is clearly stated in the policy thatbrowsing websites of an adult or illegal nature is strictlyprohibited.
To protect users from inappropriate content and to assist inenforcing the acceptable use policy, Cornwall Council has a webcontent filtering product in place. While the filtering product isefficient it cannot guarantee that all websites of an adult orillegal nature are filtered. For this reason and to ensure a safeenvironment for all library users, including children, the council'scomputer audit team have a quarterly internet monitoring process inplace to detect any internet browsing to websites of an adult orillegal nature."
This was the second case in 14 months where the monitoringprocess had detected a member of the public using a Cornwall librarycomputer to access illegal content.
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