Plymouth Herald
October 29, 2011
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/Church-youth-protector-vilest-child-porn/story-13696928-detail/story.html
A FORMER social worker employed by the Roman Catholic church in Plymouth to combat child abuse has been jailed for possessing and distributing child pornography.
Colin Jarvis was caught with more than 4,000 indecent images, some of the most serious category, level five, on a camera memory stick and on a church laptop.
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| Christopher Jarvis |
Prosecutor Julia Cox told Plymouth Crown Court that Jarvis was employed by the church to safeguard children, investigate historic cases of child abuse, formulate policies, train others and advise on safeguarding children.
He had access to sensitive information on vulnerable people.
In 2008, colleagues doing routine maintenance on the laptop found Jarvis had used search terms including the words 'young' and 'boy', but it was never mentioned.
Images found by police were mainly of boys aged 10-12, though some were older, some younger and some images were of girls, said Miss Cox.
Jarvis was caught when he uploaded five indecent images of children onto the Ning social networking website.
Police found 4,112 images on the laptop, including 120 at level four and 12 at level five, and 277 on the memory stick, including 28 at level four.
Miss Cox said Jarvis, aged 49 and of Salisbury Road, St Judes, had made full admissions and pleaded guilty to six counts of possessing indecent images, five counts of making them and one of distributing them.
Jo Martin, for Jarvis, said 3,025 of the images had been 'cached' automatically by the computer, and could not have been retrieved by him.
She produced character references from friends, colleagues and people within the church.
Miss Martin said Jarvis had been abused as a child, and suffered from a lack of self-esteem.
"These crimes were committed in part out of loneliness and frustration," she said.
She stressed that he interviewed adults but never children.
She described married father-of-four Jarvis as "a man of faith" and said he was angry and frustrated that the Roman Catholic Church was not prepared to forgive him.
Judge Paul Darlow said reports indicated Jarvis was careful, helpful and honest, but he had committed a serious crime.
"This was not a breach of trust but you of all people should know the misery, theft of innocence and long-term damage caused," he said.
"People who confided in you may well feel sullied and let down as they read that in your private life you downloaded images of children being abused in this way."
He jailed Jarvis for 52 weeks and imposed a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.
The Roman Catholic Church said it has conducted a full review of child safety practices in the South West of England following the revelations.
Jarvis was employed by the church in 2002 as a child safety coordinator following the 2001 Nolan Report on abuse by members of the clergy.
David Pond, chairman of the independent Child Safeguarding Commission for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Plymouth, said an independent review of child protection across the South West of England, including cases Jarvis had been involved with, had been carried out by the NSPCC charity and found no evidence that he had acted improperly in his role with the church.
"It is important to remember that the images on the computer screen are not just pictures – they are images of real children being abused, often in the most terrifying of circumstances," he said.
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