Convicted sex offender Gary Talbot was back in court on Wednesday where he was sentenced for possessing just under 100,000 indecent pictures and videos of children.
The former school bus driver and postman from Newcastle, Co Down and his wife Heather were jailed in February 2020 for a campaign of “vile” sexual offences against a child they began abusing as a toddler.
Talbot was initially handed a sentence of 15 years whilst his wife had a six-year sentence imposed. On appeal in October 2020, Talbot’s sentence was increased to 21 years and hers was doubled to 12 years. Talbot, 63, was returned to court today where he was handed an extended custodial sentence comprising of four years in jail followed by an extended licence period of three years.
Read more: Gary and Heather Talbot victim speaks out as pair sentenced over "depraved" abuse
He admitted 15 charges of making indecent images of children, five charges of possessing prohibited images of children and five counts of possessing extreme pornographic images spanning from March 2008 to June 2016.
The sentence was imposed at Downpatrick Crown Court, sitting in Belfast, by Judge Geoffrey Miller KC who branded Talbot - whom attended via a videolink with HMP Maghaberry - a dangerous offender.
The indecent image charges arose from a search of Talbot’s home in November 2017. Following that search he was arrested in January 2018 on suspicion of child sexual abuse offences.
Whilst six devices including laptops and a mobile phone were seized, the charges relating to the images found were not included in the original prosecution case which resulted in the husband and wife being jailed.
After all the devices were examined and analysed a total of 96,522 indecent photographs and 3,167 videos were found. When he was interviewed in November 2017, Talbot told police he had been sourcing and downloading indecent images of children for years.
Talbot also told police that whilst he enjoyed the “challenge” of searching for images which then became a “vicious cycle”, he denied having a sexual attraction to children. He has repeated this whilst in custody and told a Probation Officer that his interest in sourcing the images “isn’t a sexual thing”.
This claim was rejected by Judge Miller who said: “This is patently at odds with everything that is known about him from both the material he amassed over the years of offending, together with the gravity and depravity of the contact offences forming the background to the original police investigation.”
These original offences against the child committed by the couple were branded as “particularly disturbing, both in terms of the vile nature of the crimes ... and as evidence of Talbot’s distorted, perverse thinking”.
Defence submissions revealed Talbot has completed 13 courses since being jailed, and has expressed remorse and shame for his actions. His barrister also pointed out that when arrested Talbot told police there would be images of children on the devices seized, adding his client pleaded guilty to all 25 of the current charges.
The term imposed today for those charges will run concurrently to the sentence already being served by Talbot. After imposing the extended custodial sentence, Judge Miller addressed prison staff on the videolink and told them “the defendant can be returned to his cell.”
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