Man who stockpiled child abuse images is jailed

A man who saved more than 400 child sexual abuse images and videos on phones, a laptop and cloud storage accounts has been jailed, following a National Crime Agency investigation. Officers identified Lee Smith aged 47, from Dawlish.

A man who saved more than 400 child sexual abuse images and videos on phones, a laptop and cloud storage accounts has been jailed, following a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation.

Officers identified Lee Smith, 47, from Dawlish, Devon, had downloaded images of the most serious category of child sexual abuse.

They also recovered an indecent video of children from his mobile phone which he filmed during a trip to Uganda.

The NCA launched its investigation in March 2023 after a cloud storage company based overseas reported that child abuse material had been identified on four accounts linked to a UK-based user.

NCA investigators began work to attribute the accounts. They appeared to belong to Smith, who investigators subsequently identified had been convicted of indecent image offences in 2006, for which he had received a suspended sentence.

Around the same time, Smith was stopped and questioned by Border Force officers at Heathrow Airport after arriving on a flight from Uganda on 8 June 2023.

Smith told them he had made 29 trips to Uganda, where he claimed he was paying the school fees of a number of Ugandan children.

This information was passed to the NCA and on 17 June, as Smith attempted to leave the country on a flight to Denmark, NCA officers arrested him on suspicion of indecent image offences.

They seized a mobile phone from him, which contained the video of children in Uganda.

Smith was charged on 18 June and remanded in custody.

While Smith awaited trial, NCA officers worked with Devon and Cornwall Police to search his two cars, recovering 11 mobile phones, a laptop, and storage devices including hard drives, USBs and micro SD Cards.

Specialist digital forensic officers trawled through thousands of files stored on the devices and recovered hundreds more images of child abuse. Smith was subsequently charged with further offences.

Smith initially denied knowledge of the material and he stated that the devices and cloud accounts did not belong to him.

However, when faced with the NCA’s overwhelming evidence of his crimes, Smith pleaded guilty to all the charges against him at Isleworth Crown Court on 20 May 2024.

NCA Senior Investigating Officer Daniel Waywell, said: “Smith downloaded hundreds of images depicting just as many children being sexually abused. Every child in those images has suffered for the gratification of Smith and others like him.

“The cloud storage provider showed great responsibility in reporting their suspicions about the user accounts. Their action helped us stop Smith continuing to create a demand for child sexual abuse content and creating his own.

“The NCA is committed to working with partners worldwide to protect children, be that by stopping the abusers or those seeking the abusive content.”

Smith was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on Tuesday, 22 October.

He was also issued with a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, which curtails his activities online and in the real world. He has been placed on the sex offenders register for life.

Anyone who finds child sexual abuse content online is urged to report it to the host platform and the Internet Watch Foundation, a non-for-profit organisation that works with the NCA, police and industry to remove such content.

Report online child sexual abuse content anonymously at www.iwf.org.uk

Anyone with concerns about their own or someone else’s behaviour towards children is encouraged to call child protection charity the Lucy Faithfull Foundation on their confidential helpline on 0800 1000 900.