In today’s edition of The Bolton News, a photograph of a Mr David Aston was mistakenly used in a court report to identify the defendant on a charge of downloading indecent images.

The real defendant was a man of the same name, aged 57  from Bolton.

We sincerely apologise for our error and we would like to make it very clear that the Mr Aston who was earlier depicted in the publication of this article had no connection whatsoever with the real defendant, whose picture now appears in this article, or the offence.

 

A MAN who amassed a huge collection of child pornography told police officers he was aroused by images of mothers abusing their children, a court heard.

David Aston, 57, would adopt the username ‘Wicked Dad’ as he trawled the web for images to add to his stash of thousands of pictures and videos of children as young as four-years-old being abused.

At Bolton Crown Court, Matthew Howarth, prosecuting, said Aston’s address on Braithwaite Road, Bolton, was raided by officers in February 2018.

Four laptops and an external hard drive contained thousands of images and videos which the father-of-four had been downloading for over 10 years between 2005 and 2016.

Some of the images were downloaded and made available for distribution and at one point Aston was found to have joked in an online chat forum with a fellow paedophile: “You know we could get put in prison for this?”

Aston admitted he had a special interest in images of mothers and daughters and evidence showed him using search terms such as “paedo mum” and “pre-teen hardcore mum”.

Most of the images featured children aged between four and nine-years-old.

In total, Aston, who had no previous convictions, pleaded guilty to possessing 1,403 images at Category A (the most serious), 1,404 images at Category B and 2,756 images at Category C. He also pleaded guilty to sharing Category C images, possession of 28 indecent images and possession of extreme pornography.

Andrew Evans, defending, said Aston, now of Rivington Place, Blackrod, had made “a tremendous error of judgement” and had lost his marriage and family life as a result.

“His life has changed wholly since these offences and he now lives alone,” said Mr Evans, who added Aston had received counselling and wanted to “ask the court for support going forward.”

Jailing Aston for 16 months, Recorder Jeremy Lasker, said: “This is much more serious than an ‘error of judgement’. You told officers you had no real sexual interest in children but the sight of women abusing children aroused you. Without people like you there would not be this filthy trade in abusing children.”

Aston is now subject to a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and must sign the sex offenders register for a decade.