Restaurant manager's child porn shame

Ian Cromack, a pizza restaurant manager, received a four-month term suspended for two years and a judge ordered him to attend a sex offenders programme and to sign on the Sex Offenders Register for seven years.

The 45-year-old Cromack, of Haverhill Road, Wombwell, Barnsley, had admitted six offences involving downloading and distributing indecent images of children between August 2010 and February 2013 and possessing prohibited images of children and extreme porn.

Arthur Gibson, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court that police went to his then home in Leigh on February 24, 2013 and seized a tower computer and two hard drives.

One of them proved impossible to interrogate but on the other hard drive and tower a total of about 7,000 indecent images of children, including video images, were found along with 236 extreme pornographic images and three prohibited images.

Analysis revealed that he had used search terms for child porn and been sharing files on line with other like-minded people.

When arrested Cromack, formerly of Pendle Mill, Leigh, made admissions, said Mr Gibson. He said that the delays involved in the case appearing in court were not the fault of Cromack.

Steven Swift, defending, said that the defendant, who takes medication for long-standing depression, had not tried to “bluff it out” when arrested.

Cromack, who manages a restaurant in Sheffield, had voluntarily repeatedly gone back to the police since his arrest to find out about the progress of the proceedings as they were taking so long, he added.

The judge, Recorder David Turner, QC, said that he accepted that Cromack has suffered from depression for 25 years and said that sometimes depressed people develop bad habits such as drinking, taking drugs or watching pornography on computer screens.

He said that he was ordering him to attend the Northumbria sex offenders course because he needed help as there was always a chance of him doing the same thing again.