18 month sentence for downloading child abuse material

A former Community Service Officer has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to having downloaded child abuse material.

49 year old Stuart Santos had worked as a youth support worker and teacher in a local school in recent years.  However, the court heard that no concerns have been raised over inappropriate behaviour in either of those roles.

In summer last year, the RGP received information about a local IP downloading known child abuse material.  Police served a warrant to Gibtelecom and raided Stuart Santos’ residence on August 29th.

He was away from Gibraltar at the time and there was nobody in the residence.

The police seized various devices to send for digital forensics.

Upon his return, Santos attended New Mole House and was initially charged with possession of over 1,400 indecent images of children, which he pleaded guilty to.

In a police interview, he made full admissions and was remanded in custody. However, while awaiting sentencing, the results of the analysis of the forensic analyses, showed the images for which Santos was charged were no longer on his devices.

As a point of law, Santos could no longer be held on remand for possession, when the prosecution’s own evidence contradicted this – you can’t be subject to a possession charge if the underlying content is not present at time of seizure.  This is why he was granted bail in January of this year while the RGP prepared new charges.

The police later charged Santos with making indecent images, which in this context means downloading from the internet onto his own device.

This was possible because while the images were no longer on there, the forensics team was able to extract hash values for known child abuse material: digital fingerprints which proved he did download them.

Santos downloaded 228 category A photographs - the most severe - among hundreds of others.

His lawyer said he had taken significant steps to address his offending behaviour.  He acknowledged poor self-control and regulation and the court heard he had life-long struggles with addiction and depression.

 In a letter he said his actions had never physically hurt anyone, which Judge Liam Yeats rejected, saying it was inconceivable that Santos would not understand that viewing abuse material perpetuates demand and results in direct harm to children.

From a starting point of 30 months incarceration, the judge reduced by three to take account of mitigation, and then by a third for Santos’ early guilty plea, resulting in 18 months.

The four months spent on remand will count towards his sentence.