Langham faces jail after child porn conviction

The actor Chris Langham was remanded in custody last night after a jury convicted him of downloading child pornography.

The jury, which also acquitted the 58-year-old of indecently assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a London hotel, rejected his claim that he downloaded pornography - including images of seven-year-olds being sexually abused, raped and tortured - as part of his research for the BBC series, Help.

Judge Philip Statman remanded Langham into custody for sentencing on 14 September, telling him it would be "a misplaced kindness to give you bail at this stage". New sentencing guidelines dictate that anyone caught downloading the most serious "level five" images of child porn, as Langham did, faces an automatic jail sentence. Langham, who may face 12-18 months, was taken to Elmley prison on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent.

After a three-week trial, the jury took less than three hours to convict Langham, of Golford, near Cranbrook, Kent, of 15 charges of making an indecent photograph of a child between September and November 2005.

He was cleared of six counts of indecent assault and two counts of buggery between January 1996 and April 2000.

As the verdicts were returned he stood up with his eyes closed, but did not react visibly. The judge told him he would be looking at "punishment and deterrence" and ordered Langham to sign the sex offenders' register immediately. Langham then issued a statement through his solicitor in which he thanked the jury and said he had "been found guilty on charges I have made admission to from the moment of my first arrest".

When he was arrested, Langham's 30-year acting career had reached new heights for his role in The Thick of It. But he had come to the attention of child protection officers as early as 2002 when officers investigating a US internet site, Landslide, alerted British police. Langham was considered a low priority on the "substantial" list and would have escaped the law had not more evidence come to light in 2005, which led police to raid his house.

Images found on Langham's computer included low-level child pornography but also some from the most serious category, covering bestiality, rape and sadomasochism. One video showed an 11-year-old girl with her hands tied above her head being beaten and assaulted.

Langham refused to answer questions about the images during eight police interviews, producing a written statement instead. In it, he suggested he and the Fast Show writer, Paul Whitehouse, were developing a character called Pedro, whose catchphrase was: "I'm only a minor offender." In court, Mr Whitehouse rejected the suggestion that research was needed for a second series of Help, which was commissioned but never made.

Langham also sobbed and sank to his knees in the witness box when describing how he had been abused as an eight-year-old growing up in Canada. "I would like to know the face of the man who abused me, I would like to see his face," he said. He also said that the abused children in the images were his "brothers and sisters".

There is no defence in law for an individual to claim images of child abuse have been downloaded for research purposes. The NSPCC's head of policy and public affairs, Diana Sutton, said Langham's offence had contributed to the "suffering and degradation" of children.

"We know speaking out can be the hardest thing for an abused child to do," she said. "The number of pictures on the internet showing children being sexually abused is growing at a phenomenal rate."