Leatherhead sex offender jailed over pictures of child abuse

A SEX offender has been jailed for six months after being caught with indecent images of children for the second time.

Timothy Nelms, of Copperfield Court in Leatherhead, appeared at Guildford Crown Court on Monday after police found more than 400 images of children aged between 6 and 14 on computers at his home in January last year.

The 53-year-old was convicted of similar offences at Lewes Crown Court in 2007 and was forced to take a course to address his offending, but judge Neil Stewart said he had clearly not learnt his lesson.

He said: "The circumstances preclude consideration of anything other than an immediate custodial sentence.

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"You were faced with such a sentence on the last occasion and were fortunate to avoid it.

"You had the opportunity of the programme. Having had that opportunity you chose to offend again."

Judge Stewart also gave Nelms a seven-year sexual prevention order, meaning he must inform police within 48 hours of buying any machine capable of accessing the internet and let them install software to monitor what sites he visits.

At a previous hearing, he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of making an indecent image of a child by downloading it from the internet between September 2010 and January last year.

Judge Stewart said: "Every image recorded is an image of sexual abuse of children.

"Every time someone chooses to download such material he encourages the taking of these images and perpetuates the market for them."

Judge Stewart said the author of a pre-sentence report and the manager of the programme attended by Nelms had serious reservations about sending him on another course.

The report added that he expressed a "fatalistic attitude" towards his offending.

But Nicholas Hamblin, defending, said the charge sheet exaggerated the extent of Nelms' offending, as six charges related to images of the same child.

"One has effectively three lapses of concentration over a period of five years, for which Mr Nelms is not at all proud of himself," he said.

"This isn't a man downloading items to circulate to others or distribute to people. It's clearly for his own use. That doesn't take away from the awfulness that these images were taken by someone at some stage."

Judge Stewart also ordered that Nelms' computers be destroyed.