Castleford paedophile claimed he was sent vile abuse images found on his phone

But further analysis of Guy Phelan’s phone found that he had not only seen the images, but moved them to a different storage area on his phone. The 49-year-old appeared at Leeds Crown Court this week where he admitted three offences of possessing illegal images.

Prosecutor Christopher Dunn, said Phelan has no previous convictions but was caught with 35 Category A images – the most serious abuse – which included 34 photos and one video. He was also found to have stored 24 Category B images, which included one video and seven Category C images, again including one video.

Phelan, of Kendal Drive, Castleford, admitted having the images, but said they had been sent “unsolicited” on an app that her has since deleted. But later accepted they had been moved and stored by him.

Mitigating, Jo Shepherd, said he had been caught in February 2022 and there had been no further offending since then, and was of previous good character. She said that he had already volunteered and completed the Safer Lives accredited course for sex offenders, rather than wait for the court to order him to enrol.

She said his family had since “rallied around” him and added: “He is deeply ashamed of his behaviour. He is completely embarrassed and sorry. He accepts that although it’s only a small quantity (of indecent images), it clearly crosses the custody threshold.”

The judge, Recorder Jeremy Hill-Baker, told him: “You have never previously come to the attention of the courts. You had vile images of children on your phone which are not victimless offences. Without the market or appetite for these images being distributed, people would not be making them.

“The notion that these simply arrived on your phone and subsequently deleted defies common sense because they had been moved to elsewhere on your phone. Plainly, you made that decision to store them and keep them for your own use.”

He gave him a 12-month sentence, suspended for two year, 30 rehabilitation days, a 10-year sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) to limit his internet use, and put him on the sex offender register for 10 years.