Wigan man who had hundreds of child abuse images and animal porn avoids jail

A pervert who admitted to accessing hundreds of vile images of child abuse and animal porn on his unwitting neighbours’ computer has been spared jail.
Bolton Crown Court, where the hearing took placeBolton Crown Court, where the hearing took place
Bolton Crown Court, where the hearing took place

Michael Berry had already appeared before Wigan magistrates to plead guilty to three specimen charges of creating indecent pictures of youngsters. Of these, 417 fell into the most serious category (A); another 226 images were category B and 162 classified as C.

Related: Wigan man admits to having animal porn and child abuse imagesThe 34-year-old of Ash Grove, Orrell, also pleaded guilty to one count of possessing an extreme pornographic image which portrayed, in an explicit and realistic way, a person performing an act of intercourse with a live or dead an animal, namely a dog and unknown animal and which was grossly offensive.

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This week Berry was in the Bolton Crown Court dock for sentencing. A judge heard police received intelligence from The National Centre For Missing And Exploited Children in the US, via the National Crime Agency in Warrington that indecent images had been uploaded to Chatstep.

Bolton Crown Court, where the hearing took placeBolton Crown Court, where the hearing took place
Bolton Crown Court, where the hearing took place

On October 18 2017, officers executed a search warrant at a home on Ash Grove after the illegal images were tracked back to its IP address. However it turned out to be neighbours’ of

Berry and that he would come round on an almost daily basis to use their computer because he didn’t have internet access at his own house down the road.

The judge gave him a two-year community order which includes 100 hours’ unpaid work. He must sign on the Sex Offenders’ Register for five years and also has a Sexual Harm Prevention Order against him for the same amount of time.

Rulings were made about his computer usage. He cannot go on one unless it has the capacity to display internet use and its history has to be available whenever a police manager wants to inspect it.