A former top doctor from St James’s Hospital has escaped jail after admitting dowloading and looking at more than 1,700 child porn images and movies.
Giancarlo Esposito, 32, pleaded guilty to 21 counts of making indecent photos of children.
Leeds Crown Court heard that in September last year, police had raided his then home in Beechwood Road, Bradford while investigating users of a service provider in Luxembourg.
They found more than 1,700 images and movies containing child pornography, ranging from level five – the most graphic – to level one. The majority – 1,400 – were level one images.
Prosecutor Richard Smith said that when interviewed, Esposito admitted downloading a “block” of images, but said he had not looked at them all. He confessed he had been looking at child pornography since his early 20s.
The court was told Esposito, a former senior registrar at St James’s Hospital working in acute medicine, was on the verge of becoming a consultant. After the charges came to light, he was suspended, and formally dismissed in April this year.
Mitigating, Robert Dudley said Esposito had “at the very outset made immediate admissions about his access to the images”.
He said the matter had already had a “significant effect” on Esposito, adding: “He was not only suspended from the hospital, he is also subject to a GMC suspension. He will be struck off, and that is the end of his medical career.”
Judge Penelope Belcher told Esposito there was a “complete contradiction” in his caring professional persona and “what was going on in private”.
“I find it alarming that someone who has taken the Hippocratic oath should be involved in offending of this sort,” she said. “It is because people like you are willing to look at these images [that] these children are abused on an international scale.”
Esposito was put on a 36-month supervision order, and a rehabilitation programme for Internet sex offenders. He is also banned from working with children, and from owning any computer or internet-ready phone without telling police.
He was ordered to pay £1,200 costs, to sign the Sex Offenders Register and will be placed on an indefinite Sexual Offences Prevention Order.