Man sentenced for child sex offences (From The Argus)

Man sentenced for child sex offences

10:06am Thursday 7th February 2013 in News

A man has been jailed after admitting 28 offences relating to indecent images of children and theft.

Matthew Wadeson, 35, of St. Leonards Road, Bexhill, appeared at  Brighton Crown Court yesterday (February 6).

Wadeson who had pleaded guilty at a hearing in December, was sentenced to two years and eight months.

He will be required to register as a sex offender indefinitely on discharge from prison, and was served with a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) restricting his access to computers and children.

The court also ordered the destruction of his computer and the images.

Twenty three of the offences concerned the making of indecent photographs of children, two of distributing indecent photographs of children, two of possession of prohibited photographs of children, and one of theft of childrens' underwear.

The making and distribution offences relate to both movies and still images at all levels of seriousness.

Wadeson's activities were uncovered through an intelligence led-investigation by the Sussex Police Paedophile On Line Investigation Team.

'Predatory paedophile'

Detective Constable Mel Oakley said; "Wadeson is a predatory paedophile who not only perpetuated the abuse of children by viewing indecent images of children online, which accounts for most of the offences, but then escalated his behaviour in order to satisfy his sexual attraction to children personally.

He breached the trust of long term family friends, groomed the children and gained their trust in order to take indecent photographs without their understanding of what was going on, which he then distributed and shared with others in order to obtain further indecent images of children in return.

"He also stole items of childrens' clothing from another family and took footage of children on his mobile phone.

“The behaviour patterns of Wadeson leave me in no doubt that when arrested he was in the preparatory phase of going on to commit physical contact offences against children.”

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