Ripon sex offender jailed for possessing horrific child porn

Andrew Burt, 52, a former maintenance worker at a stately home, was on a strict court order at the time which banned him from possessing any internet-enabled device without informing police, York Crown Court heard.

But when his monitoring officers turned up at his home in Skelton-on-Ure they found two new devices which he hadn’t disclosed to police, said prosecutor Victoria Hajba-Ward.

Police seized the devices, one of which was an LG mobile phone on which they found five video clips featuring horrific attacks on young girls.

Burt, who was a builder and maintenance man at Newby Hall in Ripon, was charged with possessing indecent images of children and two breaches of a sexual-harm prevention order which had been imposed in November 2017 for inciting an under-age ‘girl’ to engage in sexual activity.

He appeared for sentence on Thursday after admitting all three charges.

Ms Hajba-Ward said Burt was a registered sex offender and still subject to the 10-year order when police called at his home on August 4 this year.

They found two unregistered devices including the mobile and a tablet of which police had not been notified.

The videos found on the phone were rated Category A – the worst kind of such material depicting the rape of pre-pubescent children.

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The youngest of these children was six-to-eight-years’ old. The others were aged between 10 and 16.

Burt told police he had downloaded the images at a guest house “while drinking a lot of Strongbow (cider)”.

He had used the KIK app to search for a chatroom called ‘Schoolgirls’ where he was sent the vile movie clips. Some of the images featured girls in school uniforms.

In 2017, Burt was jailed for 20 months after being snared by an online vigilante posing as a 14-year-old girl.

The adult decoy told police she had been chatting to a man on the internet who had used a false name and said he worked at Newby Hall.

The chat “very quickly” turned sexual and Burt sent her naked pictures of himself and a video of himself performing a lewd act. He also urged her to perform a sexual act on herself, believing her to be an under-age girl.

He was ultimately identified by photos which showed that he was indeed a maintenance worker on the country estate.

The sexual-harm prevention order was imposed to prevent Burt cruising chatrooms and refusing a polygraph test.

Richard Reed, for Burt, said his client accepted he had a sexual interest in children and wanted help for his problem.

Judge Sean Morris jailed Burt for 32 months, of which he will serve half behind bars before being released on prison licence.

Mr Morris made a new sexual-harm prevention order for life. Burt will remain on the sex-offenders’ register, also for an indefinite period.

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