A POLISH man caught with over 6,000 images of children avoided jail two days after his birthday due to only opening the content for ‘a few seconds’.
Police found 60 Category A images, 12 Category B images, 6,740 Category C images, 18 extreme images involving an animal and one prohibited image on Mieczyslaw Halas’s computer.
The 53-year-old, who celebrated his birthday on Tuesday (December 12), admitted to downloading the indecent content, including videos, between March 19, 2017, and February 26, 2021.
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However, at his sentencing hearing at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday, December 14, it was noted the Halas had only accessed the images and videos for a short time, seemingly ‘opening and closing’ very soon after the videos were played.
The longest a video was played for was 38 seconds.
Gareth Jones, defending Halas, told the court he had downloaded the content believing it was adult pornography.
Sentencing Halas to eight months imprisonment, suspended for two years, Judge Nigel Daly said: “I’ve given a lot of consideration to the sentencing on your case. As you know, there are sentencing guidelines and initially, I thought the aggravating features in this case, including the young age of the children and some of the treatment they’ve received as well as the numerous images, were such that I would increase the starting point from one year to 18 months.
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“However, on further view at what you were doing, it appears on a significant amount of these images and videos, you had only watched them for a short period of time.”
Opening the case, the prosecutor Peter Pride said Halas was arrested at his previous home address in Banbury and made ‘certain admissions’ about the offences.
A computer was seized and the indecent content was found, with most of the files being accessible. The youngest child in the images was two years old.
In a police interview, Halas said he had ‘inadvertently’ downloaded the images.
Defending, Mr Jones said Halas had used a ‘file sharing application’ which allows users to search terms and download content of other user’s computers.
“Mr Halas mentions that his searches were what he believed to be adult pornography but some of the files that were downloaded had tags indicative of something more sinister.”
The court heard Halas, of Easingstoke Road, Banbury, has no previous convictions in the UK or Poland.
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He was also ordered to complete 40 rehabilitation activity days, 150 hours of unpaid work and was made subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for a decade.
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