Sick paedo arrested in B&Q with horrific child abuse images on his phone

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A man with 22 explicit images and videos of children on his phone has been thrown in jail.

Mykal Owoo was arrested at the B&Q where he worked after the snaps – eight of which were Category A, the most serious kind of image, 10 were Category B and four were Category C – were discovered on his mobile phone.

Owoo, 27, appeared at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday (Tuesday, January 10), where it was heard he showed "no genuine remorse" for the offences and said he had only used his phone to access legal pornography, Liverpool Echo reported.

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Ben Berkson, prosecuting, said: "He suggested he may have received images through the Kik messaging service but if that did happen he would simply delete them."

The offences took place between May 29, 2020 and June 13, 2020, and Mr Berkson stated Owoo had restored his phone to factory settings four days before his arrest.

The footage on his phone totalled about 17 minutes of video, and Mr Berkson said there were "a large number of different victims in this case".

Police visited Owoo's home address in June 2020 but were told he was at work.

They then went to his workplace, a B&Q branch in Speke, Liverpool, and arrested him after speaking to his manager.

Owoo voluntarily handed over his Samsung phone, along with the passcode, when asked by police, but while he admitted accessing legal pornography, he denied looking at images of minors.

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Anthony O’Donohoe, defending, said Owoo has no previous convictions and had not offended since the 2020 incidents.

"As a direct result of this investigation the defendant lost his employment at the place where he worked on the Speke retail estate," he said.

"The case has weighed very heavily on the shoulders of this defendant, not used to the court system, it has been a great burden on him to the extent he has had suicidal thoughts.

"The court is unlikely to see Mr Owoo ever again, such has been the solitary experience of appearing before the Crown Court for offences such as this."

Despite his previously clean criminal record, Owoo was sentenced to 12 months behind bars for the first count relating to the Category A, five months for count two and three months for count three.

These sentences are set to run concurrently.

A sexual harm prevention order and notification requirements will also be in place for ten years – Owoo was prohibited from using any device which can connect to the internet without informing police and his phone was forfeited.

His Honour Judge Brian Cummings KC, sentencing, shared some details of the images and videos found on the defendant's phone – which included a video of child rape.

He said: "That is a factor which I am required to give significant weight to, and I do."

Judge Cummings also criticised Owoo for refusing to admit to his crime and for delaying sentencing by refusing to plead guilty until the day of trial.

"You weren’t the person directly committing these appalling acts but you share responsibility because without people like you, the customer, the material would not be created in the first place, not least on the scale that it is," Judge Cummings said.

"I cannot accept that you feel any genuine remorse for what you did.

“First of all it is apparent that you continue to deny any real responsibility, you continue to maintain that this material was sent to you without your desire, you continue to deny you have any sexual interest in children.”

He added: "Up until the last minute you simply tried to avoid conviction.

"Had you pleaded guilty at the outset, had you made admissions at the early stage and admitted you had a problem, the position may have been different, but you took this case to the wire, to the point of trial."

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