A Metropolitan Police officer who had a daily addiction to pornography including sex involving animals has told a court he never hunted the internet for indecent pictures of children.
George Patmore, 31, is on trial over illegal sexual images of children which were found in his possession when he was arrested in July 2022.
Patmore, who was a PC in the Met’s North East Command Unit, admits having an interest in bestiality images as well as adult pornography involving an “age gap”, and said he would log on daily to view images and videos.
But he told Southwark crown court he has no idea how 24 indecent images of children had ended up in his possession, and he insisted to jurors he had never looked for illegal material online.
Patmore is accused of having 24 indecent images, including 10 in category A – the most serious classification.
Jurors have heard he was a member of an online group called “mega teen only”.
“I’ve never been taken to sites with indecent images of young teens”, he told the court, giving evidence.
“I would not expect that in a Google search. I certainly didn’t expect that to come up and it never did.”
Patmore broke down in tears in the witness box as he admitted looking at pornography “pretty much on the daily”, including illegal images of people having sexual contact with animals, and he said he is now “two years sober” from an addiction to pornography.
“I’m f***ing ashamed”, he said. “It never goes away, I’ll always be ashamed of that – what I’ve done and viewed.
“I took my punishment for that, I feel guilty, I’ve dealt with that in the best way I could.”
Patmore said he refused to give police the PIN to his iPhone on arrest as he knew there was bestiality material on the handset.
He insisted he did not know the images of children were in his possession, and asked for his reaction when he realised Patmore replied: “I feel terrible,to be honest. I’ve got kids of my own.
“I didn’t want anything like that near any device. I feel f***ing terrible.”
He said he has “no idea how that had got there, and how that had come to be”.
Patmore agreed he had “descended to a dark place, looking at adult porn and bestiality”.
But he argued that the search terms he used had not meant he was searching for underage sexual images.
He said he could not remember searching for “younger brother incest”, but went on to say: “For someone to be a younger brother, you could be 80.
“I wouldn’t presume a younger brother is going to be under the age of 18.
“I didn’t expect anything illegal to come up.”
Patmore said the search term “teen” is the most popular worldwide on mainstream pornography websites such as Pornhub, Xvideos and RedTube, and he insisted all the material hosted on those sites is legal.
“Young doesn’t mean under age, it doesn’t mean they are children”, he said.
“I have not searched ‘child’, not searched for ‘infant’, anything along that line. There is no record of that, because that’s not occurred.”
Prosecutor Terence Woods suggested: “The internet is not ringfenced, is it? I suggest it’s the Wild West and you never know what you are going to get.”
But Patmore replied: “I wouldn’t expect if I typed in something to be drawn in to the Dark Web. You wouldn’t by putting in a Google search, would you?”
He said the ‘mega teen only’ group involved legal adult pornography, not involving children.
“I didn’t expect horrendous, obscene images of children,” he said.
Patmore, from Edgware, northwest London, denies three charges of making indecent images of children.
The trial continues.
