Jail time for Sheffield man who admitted being 'obsessed' with child abuse images

As he jailed 31-year-old defendant, Blain Allott, Judge David Dixon told him: “The simple situation is: if you share these indecent images of children you will go to immediate custody.”

During the course of a November 18 hearing, Sheffield Crown Court heard how Allott’s crimes were exposed after police, acting on intelligence that ‘indecent images of children had been accessed,’ carried out a raid on his property, which he shared with flatmates, on April 15, 2021.

Prosecuting barrister, Louise Gallagher, said: “Mr Allott told police: ‘There’s a laptop at the side of my bed, you’ll find it all there’.”

During police interview, Allott, of Skye Edge Road, Skye Edge, told officers he had been ‘obsessed’ with viewing child abuse images since the age of 11 or 12, Ms Gallagher said, adding that Allott also admitted to having a ‘sexual interest in children’ but insisted he would ‘never act on that interest’.

Ms Gallagher said indecent images of children were found on three of four of his devices that were seized by police, with 81 images Category A, the most severe of the legal categories involving content which shows the penetrative rape of children.

A further 192 Category B and 864 Category C images were found, along with an ‘extreme pornographic’ image involving a human and a dog.

Another 59 child abuse images were found in torrent software downloaded by Allott, Ms Gallagher said. The court was told that the kind of torrent software used by Allott has a default setting for downloaded items to be automatically available to be shared – or seeded – with other users. Allott, whose line of work involves IT, had not turned that setting off, meaning the child abuse images he was in possession of could be shared with others.

Judge Dixon said that while he accepts that Allott did not actively share the ‘horrible images’ of children with others, his knowledge of computers means he would have known about the default setting – and the consequences of not turning it off – making him responsible for the sharing of child abuse content.

Ms Gallagher told the court that Allott had initially denied the suggestion that his actions had led to the distribution of child abuse material, but effectively ‘abandoned’ that assertion when he pleaded guilty to an offence of distributing indecent images of children. Allott also admitted offences of possessing indecent images of children and extreme pornography at an earlier hearing.

In mitigation, defence barrister, Clarkson Baptiste, said Allott had made ‘full’ and ‘candid’ admissions to the police at the first opportunity, and had shown ‘genuine remorse’ through his guilty pleas.

“He’s demonstrated an awareness of his wrong-doing,” Mr Baptiste said, adding that he has taken steps to rehabilitate himself by seeking help in the community.

“He came to be involved in this type of offence at a young age. He became interested in persons who at that time were of the same age. What seems to have happened with him is that he’s not progressed in the same way as his peers, and the age of the persons he’s interested in has become stuck.”

Judge Dixon jailed Allott for 22 months and made him the subject of a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.