City worker who had child porn on phone avoids prison *TRIGGER*
 

please be aware this may trigger.


A CITY council worker caught with child porn has avoided a lengthy prison sentence after a sheriff ruled children would be better protected by putting him on probation.

Mark Golightly was found with more than 280 images and video clips of children being abused on his mobile phone and home computer. He was given three years' probation and 200 hours of community service at Edinburgh Sheriff Court today.

Sheriff James Scott said he would allow Golightly, who is judged to be at high-risk of reoffending, to remain at liberty in order to attend sex offenders' programmes and banned him from being alone with children under 16 and from using the internet. "It is with considerable hesitation that I refrain from sending you to prison for a very substantial period today," said the sheriff.

"The public interest and protection of children might be better served by a period of probation with appropriate conditions."

The sheriff ordered Golightly to take part in the community sex offenders' programme and attend the sex offenders' liaison service.

The images were discovered in May last year when Golightly left his mobile phone on a bus as he travelled home from work with colleagues.

A female colleague from Edinburgh City Council's Chesser House, on Gorgie Road, picked it up and intended to return it to him the following day, but read two text messages that arrived.

The messages referred to young children being abused, and the woman handed the phone to police, who found 40 text messages containing images and video clips of children aged six to 16 engaged in sexual acts.

Golightly admitted having the images on his phone and said they had been sent to him by people he communicated with in internet chatrooms, to whom he also sent images. Police searched his home at Riverside Drive, Haddington, East Lothian, and found ten DVDs and a USB storage device containing 242 images.

Thirty-five of the images were graded the second most severe level of child porn. Golightly, who lives with his parents and has a previous conviction for a similar offence in 2003, told officers he "just couldn't stop himself".

He lost his job with the city council as a result of the offences.

He pleaded guilty last month to possessing and distributing or showing indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children at his home between May 3 and 15 last year, and appeared today for sentencing.

Andy Gilbertson, defending, said the public interest would be better served by putting Golightly on probation rather than sending him to jail.

"He's assessed as being at high risk of reoffending and a period of incarceration would do nothing to assist the public with this," said Mr Gilbertson.


er....any comments? personally, i couldnt believe my eyes...

If only I hadn't been awake for something like 38 hours, I'd totally have something to say.
I have to write essays about things like this all the time for uni. Currently my head is failing.

But in short,VERY short. It's not as black and white as it appears. Prison numbers, cost, treatment, re-offending stats and all that jazz.

I agree that it doesn't make sense,and it's not a perfect system,by any means,it's got a lot of flaws.

The number of prisons with rehabilitation programmes in (for anything really) is very low in relation to the number of people in prison that need help.


If you're looking a prison as a place of punishment, certain crimes don't really fit in with being punished = reformation of character. What's needed is better rehabilitation and support.

I'm not condoning what this guy did (and other people like him do), not at all,but hmmm. I don't see how the conventional notion of prison would help him. Prisons need to undergo a lot of reforms in regards to things like this,and I think (think) there was a trail in Australia of a unit that held people on similar charges to this man with a lot of emphasis on rehabilitation and one on one work. It appeared to work pretty well,but just cost too much money.

WTF?? no, just no. He should have got jail time. and lots of it.

I'm just curious as to why he'd and any other people would look at child pornography, it's actually beyond me.

Is the topic focus over disagreement with the sentence or a debate into possible EFFECTIVE sentences or even both?

I think more research into medicine could provide the most effective solution.

Isn't there specialist prisons (where such prisoners would go) or would that actually help prisoners collaborate? What about Psychiatric hospitals?

In my opinion this shows that counselling can only go so far.

It's very difficult to get the right sentence that actually helps these people.

"I see your point, but wouldn't harsher punishment act as a better deterant and help them help themselves!!!!"

You're assuming that the people doing this, have the mental ability to see what they're doing as wrong, and yeah, some of them probably do (which makes it worse),but some of them probably don't (which doesn't make it better).
Most of the time, incarceration for punishment isn't going to help anything. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be punished for it,they should,it's wrong,it's sick, it's immoral,but locking them up,and just leaving them locked up isn't going to teach them that what they've done is wrong.

A lot of people that do this sort of stuff are of lower IQ and social status then the majority of the population,statistically, as well as a load of other things. I'm not making excuses for them,**** no,but straight out punishment isn't going to DO anything. Lock them up, let them after after x amount of time and they're never going to do it again? Utter bollocks.

Except for the fact that they probably won't get the help that they need.

Never said they should be in society.

****ing peado!!!!
Abusing an "image" or "video" is just as bad as doing the real thing in my opinion!

most peado's dont get caught because they don't realize what they are doing is wrong,but if i ever came close to a pedophile I'll make sure they knew what they were doing was wrong.

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