Brighton pensioner who possessed over 6,000 indecent images of children is jailed

Wednesday, 4 December 2019 15:48

A Brighton pensioner has been jailed for more than three years after being found with over 6,600 indecent images of children on his computer and USB sticks, despite previously being convicted, with a court order prohibiting him from possessing such material. Terence George Coomber, 78, of Stanford Avenue, was sentenced to 38 months in prison after pleading guilty to 11 charges, including possession of almost 1,500 of the most serious types of images. Police said they showed children, some very young, being sexually abused. In another of the offences, Coomber had an extreme pornographic image portraying a person performing sexual acts with animals. He was also convicted of breaking a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) severely restricting his access to computers. PC David Muddle, of the Brighton team responsible for monitoring convicted sex offenders in the community, said: "Coomber's latest offering, a flagrant breach of court decisions, began to come to light when we made a routine visit to his flat last year. "He had installed software capable of deleting his internet browsing history. "Throughout our subsequent enquiries and forensic examinations, which revealed the evidence despite his efforts to conceal it, he denied any responsibility for what we found, including a USB stick which was found hidden in a bag underneath his kitchen sink. "Coomber clearly decided to pursue his vile sexual interests despite his previous conviction and although there is no evidence that any of the images, taken from the Internet, were of local children, each image was of a child being sexually abused." Police said, in addition to his prison sentence, Coomber will now be a registered sex offender for life and his SHPO was continued until further court order.