Monitored sex offender shared baby abuse videos

A convicted and monitored sex offender has been jailed for four years after committing a further series of crimes, including sharing a video online of babies being sexually abused.

Connor Saggers, 26, from Cumbria, who admitted 11 new offences committed between last summer and this May, adopted a female user name and participated in abuse forums attracting between 100 and 1,400 members.

Carlisle Crown Court heard Saggers shared intimate images of a woman and sent abuse videos showing victims from very young babies to children thought to be aged about six to eight.

Prosecutor Emelia Boyle said: "When sending in one of these videos, the defendant wrote he had found the 'perfect video'."

Saggers told the arresting officers "I feel sick at what I've done" and claimed he could not help himself.

But Judge Michael Fanning told him: "The reality is you don't want to help yourself."

The court was told Saggers had been subject to sex offender notification requirements and a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) as a result of previous offending.

It meant he was legally obliged to keep police informed of his up to date personal details, his use of the internet and any electronic devices he held.

When officers investigated reports of indecent images of children being accessed from Saggers' Eden Valley home, he was found to have a second mobile phone, concealed in a footstool.

In court, Saggers also admitted distributing and possessing indecent photographs of children, possessing an extreme pornographic image, breaching notification requirements and the SHPO and sharing intimate imagery for the purpose of sexual gratification.

Defence barrister Gerard Rogerson said Saggers had shown an "inability to communicate" with his legal counsel, family and a probation officer, but Fanning told Saggers: "You can communicate very readily, online, with people who have the same perversions as you."

The judge imposed an indefinite sex offender notification requirement alongside the jail term.

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