A married father who downloaded a million indecent images after developing an obsession for collecting child porn has walked free from court.
Roger Borton, 56, was caught with one of the largest ever collections of child pornography in the UK and he even continued offending after police raided his home.
But even though the offences carry a maximum five-year jail term, he escaped an immediate prison sentence so he could be given therapy instead.
Borton admitted 21 charges relating to
957,351 images and movies and although he admitted to police he had looked at some for sexual gratification, he was said to be more obsessed with collecting the images than viewing them.
Some of the images were at Level 5, the most serious, but Richard Wright, representing Borton at Leeds Crown Court on Tuesday, said the vast majority were at Level 1, the lowest category, which he suggested could exceptionally sway the sentence in his case towards treatment as opposed to prison.
The court heard that
Borton was first arrested for the offences in November 2008 but faced such a long delay until sentence because of the sheer volume of images.
His bail was cancelled because of the delay and police returned to his home in July 2010 and seized more equipment which contained further illegal images.
[...]
Borton, of Leeds, West Yorks., was given a
12 month sentence suspended for two years, with supervision and up to 60 days intensive activity requirement covering the sex offender treatment programme.
He was
also ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years and under a Sexual Offences Prevention Order
was told he must make any devices capable of storing digital images available for inspection.
The judge said the offences were serious particularly where level four and five images were involved depicting the worse abuse.
He said:
'Your private world, sitting in front of your PC either looking at or collecting these images, that private world is only made possible by appalling life changing abuse, both of a psychological and physical nature which these children suffer in order effectively for others to sell these images for people like you to have sexual gratification.'
[...]
Mr Wright told the court Borton had had a traumatic childhood and had since sought help with his obsession and been open with his wife and family
who were standing by him. 
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