Prison IT worker jailed over indecent images of children

Thursday 22 December 2016

A former prison IT worker is himself behind bars tonight having pleaded guilty to distributing indecent images of children.

28-year-old Simon Gascoyne distributed at least 12 images – both stills and video – some of which were in the most offensive category.

The police investigation also revealed Gascoyne had been accessing online pornography whilst working at the prison at La Moye.

His arrest and conviction followed a tip off from Homeland Security agents in the US. They’d been carrying out their own investigations and sent Jersey Police a disc with details of conversations between various internet users who’d been using a specially created illicit site to share indecent images of children.

Gascoyne denied being a member of the group, but was later linked to it through two online accounts, one of which featured a tattoo he has on his shoulder of the character Eric Draven from the film The Crow.

In an attempt to try and cover his tracks Gascoyne had also used sophisticated software to ‘clean up’ his mobile phone history.

When questioned by the police Gascoyne told officers: “My life’s over, that’s simple… I feel like something I’ve been ashamed of, and desperate to hide, and desperate to stop doing has now become my entire identity, because that’s what happens.”

Defence Advocate Pierre Landick asked the court not to send Gascoyne to prison saying it wouldn’t help his client.

Sentencing, Bailiff William Bailhache, said he and the two jurats – Mike Liston and Dr Sally Sparrow - had spent a long time discussing the best way forward, but in the end had no choice but to jail Gascoyne.

“These are not faceless crimes. This crime has been made possible because someone has damaged children”, he reminded Gascoyne. “The community expects custodial sentences." Gascoyne was sentenced to 18 months and will be on the sex offenders’ register for at least five years.

A spokesman for the Government of Jersey gave the following statement:

“There was no evidence of illegal activity performed on States computers accessed by Mr Gascoyne. The logs of Mr Gascoyne’s web usage shows that, while he may have attempted to access pornographic sites, these attempts were blocked and all evidence was given to the police as part of the investigation. We have robust content filtering in place for all users of States systems, which prohibits access to pornography and other unsuitable categories of websites.”