A pervert who downloaded more than 9,000 images of children being abused was spared prison because he has Asperger’s.
Kevin Cornes, 35, of Ascot Avenue, Runcorn, reportedly shook with anxiety in the dock for much of the hearing at Chester Crown Court on Monday as he appeared to learn his fate. Paedophile Cornes spoke to confirm he had pleaded guilty at magistrates’ court on May 6 to three counts of making indecent images of children and one of possessing an indecent image of a child, the latter charge covering all 9,177 images.
According to Simon Mintz, prosecuting, the “making” part of the charge refers to the act of downloading. He said police executed a warrant at Cornes’s home on March 30 last year and seized digital devices.
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Three devices were “significant”, showing Cornes had downloaded 1,259 Category A images - the worst type, 1,234 in Category B, and 6,694 Category C, totalling 9,177 images. File names suggested the ages of the children ranged between three and 13 years old.
Mr Mintz said the “vast majority” were still images and 103 were videos. They were believed to have been downloaded between August 2019 and March 6 last year.
Cornes answered “no comment” when police interviewed him in January 2022. Mr Mintz said Cornes had a similar conviction from 2015 for making indecent images when he received a three-year community order, which expired in 2018, and a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) to run until 2025.
He said the sentencing range for making Category A images was six months to three years.
Judge Steven Everett, Recorder of Chester, approved the revocation of the previous SHPO and replaced it with an updated order covering Cornes’s use of the internet and police access to his devices.
Katy Laverty, defending, said Cornes was a “young man who suffers autism and Asperger’s”, which she said explained “part of the offending behaviour”, which was “of a repetitive nature”.
She argued her client should be spared an immediate prison sentence.
Ms Laverty said: “He doesn’t seek to minimise his actions or place blame elsewhere.
“He’s ashamed of what he’s done and wants to change.”
She said Cornes said he had been “traumatised” by personal experiences during his life and now felt he had “opened up” about these, and was “fully motivated” to comply with whatever probation asked of him because he “understands this is a last opportunity”.
Ms Laverty added Cornes had abstained from alcohol, had “a number of difficulties” including depression and anxiety and had attempted to take his own life.
He was also “absolutely terrified” of prison.
Recorder Everett said the court faced a “difficult sentencing exercise”.
He branded abuse images a “terrible thing”, but said a short prison sentence wouldn’t mitigate any longer term risk posed to the public by Cornes.
With reference to a probation report and the guidelines for custodial and community sentences, he concluded there was a “realistic prospect of rehabilitation”.
He said he “accepted” Cornes had a “very troubling history both by you and against you”, and that “to an extent” due to his Asperger's, Cornes did “not have the same kind of control as people who don’t suffer it”.
The judge sentenced Cornes to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years.
He also ordered the 35-year-old to complete up to 60 days of rehabilitation, the maximum available, including the Horizon sex offender programme, alongside a 10-year SHPO and 10 years on the sex offender register.
Recorder Everett said: “The pre-sentence report shows a very troubling history, both by you and against you, but most particularly the fact that you suffer with Asperger’s and I’m well aware of what that means and I’m well aware of the issues that causes.”
Commenting on the charges, Recorder Everett said abuse victims in the images, “if they lived”, will have been “scarred for life”.
He said some perpetrators resort to killing their child victims to “get rid of the evidence”.
He said: “These images are images of children who have been sexually abused, nothing more nothing less, God knows when or where, anywhere in the world, placed on the internet for people like you, sadly, to access them.
”No-one can pretend that the people committed these terrible offences won’t go on and commit them anyway because sadly people who do these things have distorted views of what a normal person should do.
“But when people like you download (them), what you do is provide ready access for people to see this terrible abuse and unfortunately you give encouragement to people who do these things.”
