Published: Wednesday, 3rd September, 2008 08:00
Bracknell IT man banned from home computer
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A COMPUTER engineer who made indecent pictures of little girls has been banned from using the internet outside work.
Steven Penner was found to have more than 1,000 indecent pictures on his computer’s hard drive after a police raid on his home last year.
He was sentenced by a judge to a three-year community rehabilitation order and was told to attend a sex offenders’ group work programme when he appeared at Reading Crown Court on Tuesday.
He was also banned from using the internet outside work for three years and will be on the Sex Offenders’ Register for five years.
Mrs Recorder Emma Arbuthnot told him the purpose of the order was to keep him away from the temptation to reoffend.
Prosecuting, David Sawtell said Penner’s house in Knightswood, Bracknell, had been raided by police on the morning of May 3 last year and officers had found 1,302 indecent images stored on his computer.
The images, which were all level one – the lowest or least serious on the five-level scale by which child pornography is rated by police –featured naked girls aged five to 11.
It was thought that the images had been downloaded between 2001 and 2006, Mr Sawtell told the court.
Penner had been convicted after trial on August 8 of 10 counts of making indecent images of children.
Defending, Franco Tizzamo said his client had not reoffended since his arrest last year and had been working hard to support his young child and another by a previous partner.
He said: “It is possible that these images were all downloaded over a very limited period of time. He has been very distressed by these proceedings which have had a profound effect not only on him but on his family as well.”
He said Penner, 43, had also been signed off from work as a field engineer at Fujitsu because of the anxiety caused by the case against him.
Mrs Recorder Arbuthnot banned him from owning a computer or using a mobile phone to access the internet outside work.
She said: “This does not prevent you from accessing the internet at work or in a public place such as a library where there are controls on the websites that you can access.This does not prevent you from doing your job.”
He has to pay £2,000 costs.
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