Sheffield Crown Court: Repeat sex-offender Mervyn Bramall spared jail after being caught with indecent images

Sheffield Crown Court heard on January 16 how Mervyn Bramall, aged 75, of Swinburne Place, Herringthorpe, Rotherham, was found by police to have indecent images of children when they called at his home during a routine visit in February, 2021.

Prosecuting barrister Daniel Ingham said: “Police attended his address on February 4, 2021, just after 4pm in the afternoon. They were conducting a routine visit when the defendant let them in.”

Police noticed a laptop and found an indecent image so the device was seized and an analysis uncovered a total of four category A images, seven category B images and six category C images, according to Mr Ingham, which had been downloaded with category A being the most serious.

Mr Ingham said Bramall is a registered sex-offender who has previous convictions linked to sexual related offending dating back to 1975 and his last conviction was for possessing indecent images of children from 2006 for which he received a 54-month custodial sentence.

Bramall pleaded guilty to his latest offences of three counts of making indecent images of children relating to categories A, B and C.

Defence barrister Chris Aspinall said Bramall has significant health problems and the defendant had recently been admitted to hospital because of low-blood oxygen levels and he will need further tests.

Mr Aspinall added that even though Bramall has an ‘extremely unattractive’ criminal record the number of indecent images involved in his latest offending is much less than for his previous offending.

Judge Sarah Wright told Bramall that despite his previous convictions dating back to 1975, 1980, 2000 and 2006 and that he is subject to an indefinite sex offender order, police still found he had downloaded indecent images of children on his laptop.

She sentenced Bramall to 20 months of custody suspended for two years with a rehabilitation requirement and a Sex Offender Treatment Programme.

Judge Wright explained she felt more could be achieved with programmes outside of custody to rehabilitate the poorly defendant than if he was incarcerated.