Labour Councillor for Wokingham (Berkshire) and former teacher Nelson Bland was convicted on 16 counts of possession and distribution of hardcore child porn in 2004. Bland had earlier admitted 16 counts of making indecent images of children and one count of distributing child porn.
Bland had actually used his own teenage daughters computer to hoard his grotesque gallery of child abuse, which was discovered by police during a search of Bland's home, when they arrested him in connection with the murder of a Nottingham businessman.
Former Teacher and Labour councillor Bland described himself as sad and pathetic after admitting 16 charges related to perverted porn sites at Reading Magistrates Court.
Hilary Neville, prosecuting, told the court that Bland was working as an IT teacher at Denefield School at the time. She said "He was also a councillor for Bulmershe ward on Wokingham District Council. He was a married man living with his wife and 18-year-old daughter in Woodley."
"On April 29 last year he was arrested at home by officers of Leicester constabulary on an unrelated matter. No charges arose from that but his home address was searched and a compact computer base unit was seized."
She said police found pornographic pictures and fictional text stored on the PC and text from a chat room where distributing pornographic images was discussed. Bland's PC was returned to him and Leicestershire police referred the matter to Thames Valley Police, who searched Bland's home again on September the 3rd and seized two computers.
Mrs Neville said "The first was the computer that Leicester police had originally seized and the second was one that was constructed by Bland himself. It was found in his daughter’s bedroom."
The court heard the computer originally seized by Leicester Police now only contained one image – Bland is believed to have wiped the others.
"The computer from his daughter's bedroom had 63 images of child porn. It is from this computer that most of the material from this case comes. There were also floppy discs containing indecent images." she said.
The court heard Bland was arrested and made no comment to questions put to him. But in a subsequent interview he said he admitted receiving the photos on his computer and accepted he was responsible for downloading the images. He said the downloading was due to him and no one else in the house.
Mrs Neville said Bland thought he had removed the images from the computer before passing it to his daughter. "He described himself as sad and pathetic. He admitted looking at pictures and having conversations of a sexual nature and said he had been doing it for about two years." she said.
One picture viewed by magistrates showed a child in shackles being abused by a paedophile.
Martin Bryan, defending, said "There should be a distinction between the actual taking of photos and being in a place where a child is made to pose for a photo, and someone who downloads a photo from an e-mail. Mr Bland is in the second category. He was going to give a computer to his daughter so she could use it for her course work. At that time Mr Bland erased all of the images from the file and passed that computer to his daughter."
"He then purchased a new computer for his own use, so, where it was said that there were 63 images of child porn on his daughter's computer, these relate to images which were last accessed back in December 2001."
He explained that images from the computer remained on the hard drive and were accessed by a police computer expert.
The court heard Bland had viewed a total of 91 indecent images of children – 15 of which were classed within the second highest level of seriousness.
Bland, who now lives at Polperroy in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, admitted 16 charges of making indecent pseudo photographs of children and one charge of distributing an indecent pseudo photograph of a child.
Mrs Neville also asked for 75 other offences concerned with making indecent pseudo photos of children to be taken into account. The case was adjourned until Wednesday, March 24 for pre-sentence reports.
Magistrate Rod Bailey told Bland, who now lives in Hucknall, Nottingham, that only his earlier guilty plea had saved him from jail.
Bland walked free from Court after being sentenced to 100 Hours Community Service, placed on the Sex Offender's Register for five years, and ordered to attend Rehabilitation Classes for Paedophiles.