In a harrowing finding that can easily send a shiver down the spine of anyone who has an ounce of humanity left, a businessman from the UK who also served as the chamber of commerce president was found guilty of watching child abuse online. Peter Tomlinson was found guilty of being a high risk of harm to children and was given an 18-year sentence in prison.

Trigger warning: Sexual Abuse, Pedophilia  

63-year-old Peter Tomlinson from Isle of Wight, UK, paid about £10,000 (approximately Rs. 10,12,210) to watch live streams of abuse being telecasted from the Philippines. According to prosecutors, the former president of the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce contacted Filipino women on the internet, paid them to see live sex showed that involved children as young as 13 years old.

According to prosecutors, Tomlinson, who pleaded guilty to 20 offenses, used to order what he wanted to see in exchange for money. From 2015-2017, Tomlinson made payments of £5,500 spread across 127 transactions to Filipino women online. Another investigation by the National Crime Agency revealed that Tomlinson made a transaction of £10,000 for his heinous desires. The money was paid to watch live streams that showed sexual abuse from the Philippines.

When he was arrested by the National Crime Agency back on October 19, he gave an appalling statement saying, “The thing you’re looking for is on my computer in there. It is my escape from reality. That is all it is.”

On further investigation, the Wessex senior crown prosecutor Anthony Johns said that Tomlinson had no options but to accept his guilt as there were several thousand text messages, chat history, indecent pictures recovered from him.

After his arrest in October 2019 from his home, police officers unearthed some mind-numbing shreds of evidence of his debauchery. According to police, when Tomlinson started the abuse, he chose a young child of merely 5 years of age. In January 2018, he viewed live sex show that he demanded involved a child. He paid £22 for that particular show. A year later, in January 2019 his urges reached a demonic turn where he paid £7.66 to a Filipino woman to abuse a 10-year-old child.

According to the police, further investigation revealed that Tomlinson and her female Filipino facilitator exchanged 4000+ lines of chat on Skype, 358 video calls and over 3,800 text messages. In these interactions, Tomlinson slipped down in his depravity and continued asking for “harder” footage of abuse, and even complained about his disappointment on what he received.

In 2018, he paid the facilitator £12.99 and told her that he expected a show that involved 2 girls and continued for 30 minutes. The facilitator is also under arrest and the abused children are safeguarded.

Meanwhile, the Judge who passed the ruling described the man as depraved and said how he derived extreme gratification of sexual nature from his misdeeds.

“The thought of such activity is sickening to decent people. The idea a mother could be persuaded to do this to her children is appalling to right-thinking people and was doubtless brought on by the destitution of the people you were transferring what was in your life very modest sums of money but to them, it was considerable sums of money,” said the judge.

As to how Tomlinson ought to be sentenced, the judge outlined a fair and justified sentence for each of his charges. Since Tomlinson pleaded guilty, the judge said he would have to discount a third from each sentence. In the end, the judge decided Tomlinson ought to serve 3 sentences of 6-years each running consecutively. This makes the sentence a total of 18 years.

Additionally, the judge also ruled that Tomlinson would need to serve an extended 5-years of the supervised license period. Moreover, as a victim surcharge and court costs, the judge ruled that Tomlinson would need to pay a sum of £1,800.

 

Also read: Man blames “devil” as he is slammed with 10 years imprisonment after masturbating on 5 year boy