A Norfolk sixth former has been convicted of downloading and sharing child porn images via the dark web.
Luke Chapman, 18, of Spirketts Lane, Harleston, admitted two charges of making an indecent image of a child when he appeared at Norwich Magistrates' Court on Friday, 8th November 2019.
Making an indecent image of a child is an offence under section 1 of the Protection of Children Act 1978. It is an either way offence with a maximum penalty of 10 years' custody on conviction on indictment, 6 months' custody and/or an unlimited fine on summary conviction.
Magistrates heard that police obtained a warrant to search the home Chapman shared with his parents in early June.
Information received had connected Chapman's Gmail email address with the attempted upload of indecent images of children to the web. Police seized devices from the Harlesdon property when Chapman was at school. They also visited the school to seize mobile devices in his possession.
Ashley Petchey, prosecuting, said that Chapman had used the Tor network, a browser used for accessing the dark web, to search for pornographic images because he was interested to see how easy it would have been to access them and to see how "messed up people were".
Analysis of Chapman's devices yielded more than 1,000 indecent images and videos of children, some of whom were only 2 years old. Press reports do not indicate the Category of images involved.
The court heard how in the past year he had become addicted to downloading the images but he did not gain any sexual pleasure from doing so.
He admitted to sending the pictures to some others but only did so because he did not want to be friends with them anymore.
Damien Moore, mitigating, said the matter was too serious for the Magistrates' Court to deal with.
Magistrates agreed and sent the case to Norwich Crown Court for sentencing on 6th December 2019.
Chapman was released on unconditional bail until that date.
He was immediately placed on the sex offenders register.
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