Northampton paedophile given suspended sentence after having nearly 400 images of children on laptops

Indecent and prohibited pictures and videos to 'satisfy sexual interest in young teenage girls', dating to 2015
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A Northampton paedophile with nearly 400 images of children and one of bestiality was given a suspended prison sentence at court on Thursday (September 16).

Vincent Rice had 248 indecent images and 135 prohibited pictures of children mostly pre-pubescent girls on two laptops, with creation dates going back more than six years.

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The 59-year-old, of Water Lane, Wootton, previously pleaded guilty before being sentenced to 12 months in jail, suspended for two years, at Northampton Crown Court.

Northampton Crown CourtNorthampton Crown Court
Northampton Crown Court

His Honour Judge David Herbert QC told him: "The fact the images date back to February 2015 demonstrates how long it was you were satisfying your sexual interest in young teenage girls."

Victoria Rose, prosecuting, said police raided Rice's home on January 29, 2020, with an officer telling him: "You may know what I'm talking about," with the defendant replying: "Yes."

Police seized an Acer and a Dell laptops which contained eight category A indecent images of children, the most serious kind, including four videos, and 240 category C indecent images of children.

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The devices also had two indecent pseudo-photographs of children, one extreme pornographic image of a person performing an act of intercourse with a dead animal, and the prohibited images, which included four videos.

They were all accessible but there were also some files investigators could not access - the indecent images dated back to March, 2018, and the prohibited images to February, 2015.

Police also found evidence of internet searches for indecent images of children and websites likely to contain such pictures, as recently as the day before the raid.

After his arrest, Rice admitted during his interview that he had been searching for images to satisfy his sexual interest in girls aged 12-14 for a long period of time.

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Steven Talbot-Hadley, defending, said: "In my respectful submission, he has shown remorse and has taken some steps himself to add parental controls on to his internet.

"He tells me since the items were removed he has not replaced them so he doesn't have any laptops.

"He's faced up to his responsibilities in relation to this and has taken steps to address the situation.

"The court may feel there's something to build on then with some sort of rehabilitation order."

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Judge Herbert told Rice that the courts taken offences such as his seriously and they usually result in custodial sentences but he decided to suspend the jail term on this occasion.

"It seems there is a sufficient prospect of rehabilitation to impose the sentence I am doing and therefore protect the public in the future from your offending," the judge told him.

As well as the suspended sentence, the defendant will have to complete 100 hours of unpaid work and 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days and was given a sexual harm prevention order.