Businessman jailed for downloading 'horrific' child porn

A businessman and former chamber of commerce member was jailed today for downloading some of the worst images of child pornography, including babies.

David Uwins, 65, admitted accessing 842 abuse images on his home computer after his credit card details were discovered by American enforcement officers in investigating a child pornography website.

Uwins, who owns Ace Optics camera shops in Bath and Yate and a former chairman of the Transport and Highways Committee of Bath's Chamber of Commerce, even used his wife Patricia's name as a password to the site.

He was sentenced today at Bristol Crown Court for 12 months to run concurrent on each of the 21 counts of making indecent images of children.

He was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register for 10 years and was banned from having unsupervised contact with children.

The court heard that of the 842 images, 66 were in the worst category and 245, including three movies, were in the next worst category.

Almost all of the images downloaded are of children under the age of 10 and some of them are babies.

Uwins, who browsed the site between 2004 and 2006, told police that he had paid for adult pornography and a pop-up browser had invited him to view indecent images of children.

Brendon Moorhouse, mitigating, said Uwins, of Langridge, near Bath, no longer had an interest in these types of images and it was a curiosity at the time.

"He is a man very much in the public eye and the publicity caused by this case has had an impact on his business as suppliers are now declining to continue contracts with him.

"He and his partner have been subject to verbal abuse from neighbours."

Judge Martin Picton said: "This is not child porn, it is child abuse.

"They are of the most gross and awful, and children suffered to produce those images.

"The children involved in a number of those images were babies being abused and you paid for that privilege on three occasions.

"It increases the potential to perpetuate and encourage the abuse of more children to feed a market that is profit driven."

After the hearing. investigating officer for Avon and Somerset Police's Internet Child Abuse team said the images downloaded by Uwins were of the most horrific she had ever seen.

Detective Constable Abi Hodder said: "I have been involved in investigating this type of crime for many years and these images are some of the worst I have seen.

"I have no doubt that people like Mr Uwins who subscribe to these sites generate a demand for others to continue to sexually abuse innocent children.

"There is no hiding place on the internet for those that seek sexual gratification from these types of images."