A SERIAL child porn downloader and flasher today won an appeal against his potentially life-long jail term after top judges decided he could not be classified as a dangerous criminal.
Peter John Barber (56), from Westwood, Peterborough, was handed an indefinite jail term “for public protection” in November 2008 at Peterborough Crown Court, after admitting a series of offences involving the distribution, making and possession of in
decent images of children.
The sentence, almost identical to a life term, meant Barber would not be freed until the Parole Board was convinced he was no longer a serious danger to society.
But top judges today overturned the open-ended sentence, replacing it with a conventional four-year jail term, of which he will have to serve half before he becomes eligible for automatic release.
Thousands of indecent images were discovered in Barber’s home, some featuring children as young as one year old, London’s Criminal Appeal Court heard.
Barber’s sentence came just five years after he was handed a community rehabilitation order for covertly filming naked children on a beach.
His latest crimes were uncovered when Belgian police noticed an indecent image which had been uploaded to a website, and traced it back to him.
They contacted their Cambridgeshire counterparts, and police raided his home in August 2007, uncovering a stash of thousands of pictures and movies of children.
Hundreds of them were classified as of the most serious and shocking type.
Barber admitted five counts of distributing indecent photos of children, nine of making them and one count of possession.
Mrs Justice Rafferty, sitting at the Appeal Court with Lord Justice Dyson and Mr Justice Sweeney, said Barber had seven previous convictions, for 19 offences, including nine of indecent exposure, and had been offending since 1971, when he was aged 18.
The images found at Barber’s home were predominantly of girls aged between three and 10, but also featured children as young as one and up to the age of 15.
Mrs Justice Rafferty said the sentencing judge had identified Barber’s reoffending as an aggravating feature when sentencing him to imprisonment for public protection.
“These are notoriously difficult sentencing exercises, but there is, however, force in the submissions put before us today,” she told the Appeal Court.
Overturning the indefinite sentence as “not necessary in the interests of justice”, she added: “This was a man with a significant previous relevant offending, whose success on a sex offenders’ programme had not been long lasting.
“These were offences committed over a not insignificant period of time.
“That prompts us to the view that the appropriate sentence would have been one of four years.
“We have every sympathy with the sentencing judge, dealing with the welfare of the defendant and the interests of the general public, and trying to balance what help there was in the pre-sentence report.”
