Gifted a suspended sentence by Judge Peter Johnson, Plymouth Paedophile Joshua Pope, a former secondary school teacher who admitted downloading hundreds of obscene images and videos of children engaging in sexual activities.
At Plymouth Magistrates’ Court on June 11, Joshua Pope of Lancaster Gardens, Plymouth, entered a guilty plea to three charges, namely making indecent images of children of categories A, B and C, with A being the most serious and depraved.
Today, the prosecutor told Plymouth Crown Court how police came onto information linking photos of child sexual assault to a Dropbox account linked to 26-year-old Pope. Police visited Joshua Pope’s house on March 8, 2023; Pope was arrested, and several electronic items were taken, including an Apple iPhone, a second iPhone, a hard drive, and an Apple Mac Pro with a damaged screen.
Investigators turned up 276 pictures of Category A, with 210 moving ones for the court. They also came upon 214 Category B photos, of which 127 were moving and 296 Category C with 25 moving images. Images were downloaded throughout many years up until March 5, 2023, according to police.
Joshua Pope stated in a police interview that he had “stumbled” into the pictures “by accident” and then erased them right away, but over the past two years, he had started clicking on links he knew he could discover obscene images of minors. Joshua Pope stated to police he had “no sexual interest in children”, and the pictures had been downloaded “out of boredom and loneliness”, and he had “felt desensitised to it”. He further admitted that just one week before his arrest, he had downloaded additional nasty content.
While he did not believe he had kept any of the photographs, he accepted, at his second police interview on November 30, 2023, following more inquiry, he received the accounts were his.
The 27-year-old, Joshua Pope, was of good character apart from wanting to shag children; he had never had any convictions or cautions to his record.
In mitigating, his lawyer Ed Bailey said the knock on the door by the police had been a “wake-up call” and that his client’s “obsession for searching for indecent images of children had got way out of control, especially during the isolation of the epidemic”. Joshua Pope reported feeling “relieved that he had been finally caught and his secret was out in the open” and was “able to deal with his sense of shame upon his family finding out”.
Joshua Pope had “immediately lost his job, which was decent as a secondary school teacher,” Mr Bailey said. Mr Bailey reported that his client paid for six months of one-on-one therapy sessions and interacted with the Lucy Faithful Foundation and the Stop It Now group to overcome his underlying inclination to see “this type of material”.
While his client denied a sexual interest in minors, Mr Bailey said the judge would acknowledge this as a “familiar feature with offenders of this type” and he would be working on this.
Joshua Pope claimed to have lately obtained fresh work as a “self-employed journalist and copywriter”.
Judge Peter Johnson informed Joshua Pope that some of the kinds of images he came across were read out – such as minors being sexually penetrated – for the 26-year-old to grasp “exactly what it is you have been doing”.
He informed Joshua Pope, “You have been a party to the sexual abuse of children by generating the demand which leads to these children being abused.” Not only physically but also psychologically, it creates long-term damage for screamingly clear reasons. It seriously compromises their mental health. It influences their relationship-forming capacity. Said, the damage is usually permanent and ongoing”.
Over the next two years, Judge Johnson KC assured Joshua Pope any questions he had about this damage would be “dispelled” when he engaged in an authorised curriculum.
Judge Johnson observed how Joshua Pope had lost his position as a schoolteacher, for which he had spent some time training, considering the aggravating and mitigating circumstances and the sentencing criteria. She said, “Quite right, too”.
Declaring there was a reasonable chance of rehabilitation, he gave Joshua Pope an eight-month jail sentence suspended for two years. He told him he needed to be under two years of supervision and attend an accredited sex offender program lasting 42 days, which would force him to dig “deep inside your soul” and make sure he never engaged in this offence once more.
He also told Joshua Pope to finish up to 15 Rehabilitation Activity Requirement days and perform 100 hours of unpaid work. Judge Johnson also approved an application for a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, stating the Disclosure and Barring Service would advise Pope he would be forbidden from interacting with children and vulnerable persons in future.
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