This is Gloucestershire
September 26, 2008
http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/latestnews/9-30am-Paedophile-vicar-collected-images-like -magpie/article-355474-detail/article.html
A VICAR who once preached in Gloucestershire has been jailed after downloading thousands of sexual images of children.
Richard Hart, 59, was jailed for three and half years at Cardiff Crown Court after he admitted amassing a collection of more than 56,000 indecent images of children.
Hart, who was suspended from all duties by the Church in Wales following his arrest, was also disqualified from working with children by Judge Michael Burr.
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He will also be subject to a 10 year sexual prevention order upon his release that was modified to allow the trained computer programmer to perhaps find paid work with computers.
Hart was ordained as a priest in 1986, and served communities across Wales and Gloucester until his crimes came to light earlier this year.
He was educated at St David's College, Lampeter, where he gained a BA degree in 1982, and Oriel College in Oxford, where he achieved an MPhil degree in 1984.
Hart also attended Queen's College, Birmingham, before being ordained as a deacon in 1985.
His first position within the Church in Wales was as a curate in Sketty, Swansea, from 1985 until 1987.
He then became priest-in-charge of the parish of Llanbister with Llanbadarn Fynydd with Llananno, Mid Wales, in 1987, becoming vicar there the following year.
Hart stayed there until 1992, when he became priest-in-charge of a parish in Gloucester. He remained in that position, at the parish of Preston and Dymock with Donnington and Kempley, until 2000.
The following year, he took up his position in the parish of Beguildy and Heyope and Llangynllo and Bleddfa in Mid Wales.
Officers from Dyfed-Powys Police carried out the raid on January 11 after Hart's credit card details from the illicit websites he accessed, were passed onto them.
Mr Morris said: "What they identified from material in the bedroom was, to a paedophile, a veritable Aladdin's Cave.
"Subsequent examination of the hard drive revealed an array of child pornography."
In addition to 344 printed images, 56,562 images were recovered from Hart's computer. Of these, 1,445 were deemed category four and 44 category five – the most serious and degrading classification of images.
The court heard some of the images were of girls as young as four.
"The prosecution say beneath the veneer of respectability, there lurked a perverted craving and lusting for young girls," said Mr Morris.
The prosecutor said Hart admitted in police interview he had a voracious appetite for collecting indecent images.
"Indeed he said in a very frank interview, he said he had a magpie instinct," said Mr Morris.
"He said 'once you start, you just keep collecting don't you?'
"He said his appetite was such that he wanted more and more."
He added: "The images covered the whole gamut of prohibited material."
The court heard Hart's 41-year-old wife, Julia, was interviewed by police following the raid.
Mr Morris said her attitude was "bizarre, to say the least."
"She said she knew her husband viewed images of children from about the age of five years of age and was not surprised the police were there," said Mr Morris.
The prosecutor said Mrs Hart considered the images were nobody else's business as long as the parents of the children photographed were happy.
She said the couple would sometimes view some of the milder images before sexual intercourse.
When Mrs Hart, a teaching assistant, was re-interviewed some months later, Mr Morris said she changed tact and expressed her "sickening" at the sheer volume of images on her husband's computer.
She was subsequently cautioned for possession of category one sexual images of children. She was also disqualified from teaching or working with children for two years.
Mr Morris said when detectives asked Hart why he retained some of the more sadistic images on his computer, he replied that "some of them proved to be interesting in a rather gruesome way".
Mr Morris said Hart demonstrated a "gross breach of trust" to his congregation in the parish of Beguildy as some of the charges pertained to indecent photos he had taken himself several years ago of young girls attending Sunday school.
When interviewed by police, one victim said she found it "difficult to deal with" that the man she trusted was getting "turned on" by those photographs.
"There is no evidence to date that the defendant has abused children in his care but from what he stated in interview, he has a deep-seated, prurient interest in children," said Mr Morris.
The prosecutor said Hart began building up a collection of paedophile material in the 1980s through magazines imported from abroad. He said with the advent of the internet, the defendant graduated to downloading material from websites.
John Ryan, defending said: "Mr Hart is hugely disappointed in himself."
He added: "For him, his career is at an end. At his stage in life, it is likely he will never work again."
Judge Burr said: "Richard Hart, you have pleaded guilty to 21 offences of making, taking, and possessing indecent images of children; some of them very young.
"We've heard they were aged between four and 15, involving a great variety of sexual activity and perversion.
"Some of the images were photos taken by you involving very young girls entrusted in your care."
For the four counts of taking indecent images of the children entrusted in his care, Judge Burr sentenced Hart to an 18 month prison sentence.
He was given a consecutive two years' imprisonment for the 17 other offences.
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