The defendants were convicted of making indecent quasi-photographs of children under the Act. They had received e-mails, and opened the images in attachments to those e-mails. They appealed saying that the opening of the attachment was not sufficient to constitute the act of making an image.
Held: Applying Bowden and Atkins, the deliberate opening of the attachment or the downloading of an image from a web page did create a new image, thereby proliferating the distribution of such images. The defendants were properly convicted. The core test was whether the act of making an image should deliberate, and in the knowledge that the image was, or was likely to be, an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child.
Judges:
Lord Justice Dyson, Mr Justice Johnson and Judge Sir Rhys Davies, QC
Citations:
Times 07-Mar-2002
Statutes:
Protection of Children Act 1978 1(1)
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Regina v Bowden CACD 10-Nov-1999
The defendant downloaded indecent images of children onto his computer, and printed them out. He was convicted of making new images by virtue of creating copies on his disc by downloading, by displaying them on his screen, and by printing them out. . .
Cited – Atkins v Director of Public Prosecutions; Goodland v Director of Public Prosecutions Admn 8-Mar-2000
For possession of an indecent image of a child to be proved, it was necessary to establish some knowledge of its existence. Images stored without the defendant’s knowledge by browser software in a hidden cache, of which he was also unaware, were not . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 06 July 2022; Ref: scu.170070
