All but one were classed as Category A images – meaning they showed the most serious type of abuse.
Walsh, 47, was arrested during a police raid on his home in September 2015. Detectives believe he may have downloaded many more child porn films, as they found 300 files had been deleted from his computer.
Walsh told his solicitor he committed the offences because he was ‘tired’ of working at the hospital and wanted to quit his job.
‘Over a period of at least some months, the precise period is unclear, you were involved in downloading and distributing extreme movies and images portraying sexual abuse of children and you went to considerable lengths to try and conceal what it was you were doing.
Defence barrister Lee Gledhill said his client was full of ‘severe regret’ for what he had done. ‘He is aware that these are real children in the videos and harm he indirectly caused by the re-distribution of these images,’ he said.
‘He explains he was tired of his job and wanted to get out of medicine after many years of training and working. He practised medicine for some considerable years and had a positive impact on the community he lived in. He and his wife are still together but he had to explain this to his own children.’
The court heard how he was arrested on September 3, 2015 when officers from the child exploitation unit carried a search out at his home address. He was arrested and his computer and a memory stick were seized.
No indecent images were found but there was significant evidence that he had been accessing child abuse material as well as file wiping software.
Prosecuting, James Davies said: 'A leading forensic expert was called and advised the router to be seized. He found clear evidence of him downloading indecent images of children and distributing them.
'The defendant went to considerable lengths to conceal his online activity. It was over a period of four months that can be identified but not any further than that.
Defending, Lee Gledhall said his client was full of 'severe regret' for what he had done. He added: 'He is a man of previous good character who practised medicine for some considerable years and had a positive impact on the community he lived in.
'This was his time off. It was during these periods he committed these offences.
An NSPCC spokesman said it was clear that Walsh’s only concern was ‘his own twisted gratification’.
Children ‘raped by evil grooming gang’ demand police act on two-year probe
VICTIMS of a child grooming gang say they feel "let down and upset" after a two year police probe saw no charges being brought
By JON AUSTIN
PUBLISHED: 09:59, Sun, Jul 4, 2021
Police have appealed for any other victims to come forward after the CPS declined to authorise charges against several men arrested during the investigation into alleged schoolgirl rapes in Hull. Four women, now in their late teens and early 20s, told police they were groomed and sexually abused, sometimes in school uniforms, by groups of men in the Hull area, between 2017 and 2019. Two of them said the abuse happened in other parts of the North.
They said they suffered abuse while at school or in care by several men, some involved in the taxi and takeaway trades, and told of being groomed and given drugs and alcohol, before being gang raped.
There were 34 arrests from October 2019, but no one has been charged in connection with allegations made by the women after the CPS reviewed an evidence file. Humberside Police believes other victims have yet to come forward.
The first arrests were made a few weeks after the Sunday Express enquired about the investigation.
A retired social services whistle-blower had claimed it and other allegations of child sex grooming in Hull were not being taken seriously.
DCS Phill Ward said he “absolutely believes” the women were sexually abused as described, but “evidential gaps” meant the CPS was not satisfied of a prosecution.
He said: “We absolutely believe their accounts and took this very seriously. That is why we set up Operation Marksman and carried out a thorough investigation.”
He said due to the traumatic events full disclosures from victims had taken time, and as they were often groomed with drugs and alcohol, recollections of when or where abuse happened may not always have been precise.
'I was once taken to a hotel in school uniform with a man in his 30s, but the hotel didn’t question' (Image: Getty)
He said: “We have been unable to close those gaps and at this time have exhausted all current lines of inquiry. No investigation is ever closed and we will act on any new information. I would urge any victims or witness to come forward, with the clear message this investigation will be very thorough.”
Police seized more than 150 mobile devices and looked at data to see if suspects were in the location of the alleged offences at the same time.
He said: “We looked at messages, social media and cell site data. There was very limited evidence of association and we found no evidence of individuals facilitating other males to pay for sex abuse. Some knew each other but did not associate regularly. In some cases, a victim said it happened at an address, but our evidence showed the suspect not linked to that address. There was some contradicting evidence between a victim and a suspect.”
Humberside worked with other forces including Cumbria, with mobile phone data going back to 2018 provided.
The Sunday Express was approached by one the victims last August amid fears the investigation was being scaled down.
But Chris Noble, Humberside Police Assistant Chief Constable, made assurances at the time in a letter that this was not the case. Two more arrests were made last December in South Yorkshire and Cumbria. A suspect in Barrow-in-Furness was also a suspect in similar grooming allegations in Cumbria, but the man has not been charged by either force.
Ex-detective Maggie Oliver accuses the police of failing the girls (Image: MEN)
Detective Superintendent Laura Koscikiewicz, head of Humberside Police’s Protecting Vulnerable People Unit, said there had been some charges from the investigation, including sexual offences and money laundering, but not connected to the original complainants. She said: “We’ve spent a lot of time getting to know the girls, building up their trust to allow them to confide in us, helping them to understand and comprehend what they’ve been through.
“I want to praise the girls for their bravery and strength throughout this difficult two years.”
One victim, now 18, told the Sunday Express she was raped, trafficked and abused by more than 100 different men over three and a half years from the age of 13, including being filmed.
She said: “The police said, ‘We won’t stop until all of these men are behind bars’, but two years later, they are walking free, still able to hurt vulnerable girls.” Another victim, now 20, said she was raped and sexually abused by at least 22 different men while at school and had become pregnant by one of them before an abortion.
She said: “The police came to all our houses and promised us all the men would be locked up with no bail, so that’s why we went ahead.
“We spent nearly two years doing days and days of meetings with police, video interviews, reliving all our trauma and doing identity parades, seeing the men’s faces, all for it to be closed and over 30 men let free and able to carry on abusing young girls.
“I felt very let down and upset when we were told there was not enough evidence, as I had a folder of over 2,000 pages and I’m sure the police had a lot more.”
A third girl under the care of East Riding of Yorkshire social services said she was moved to children’s homes in different parts of the country. But she said she still came into contact with around 50 older men, many of whom abused and raped her.
The girls have been supported for the past year by Maggie Oliver.
She is a former detective who resigned from Greater Manchester Police after blowing the whistle on what she said was the force’s poor handling of its investigations into a major network of child sex groomers in Rochdale.
She now runs the Maggie Oliver Foundation which supports victims of sexual grooming and tries to get forces to re-open investigations.
She is concerned about overlaps with the Hull case and Barrow-in-Furness, where Cumbria Police has “denied there is a sex grooming gang operating,” despite numerous allegations. She plans to refer the case to Operation Hydrant, a National Police Chiefs’ Council initiative which can review complex child sex abuse cases.
Mrs Oliver believes the CPS is often reluctant to take on complex sexual grooming cases, due to the time and resources required, preferring instead to deal with simpler individual rape cases.
Or, does the reluctance come from the probability that the men are all Pakistani Muslims? That's just a guess, but the pattern seems to fit what has happened across northern England in cities where there are numerous Pakistani expatriates.
She said: “It is scandalous that these girls sat through days of interviews and have no justice. In Hull there were multiple girls giving the same accounts. I find this impossible to disregard.
“I think it is very closely connected to the collapse of rape and abuse prosecutions as the CPS will take forward the easiest cases.
“These cases can be difficult but it does not mean it is not available to the prosecution to bring charges and a jury will not see through the smoke and mirrors of the defence.”
Survivors demand action on ‘epidemic’ of child sexual abuse affecting millions in UK
Exclusive: Inquiry evidence suggests that official estimate that 7.5% of adults were sexually abused as children is ‘tip of the iceberg’
Lizzie Dearden
Home Affairs Correspondent
The Independent
Child sexual abuse is an “epidemic” affecting millions of people in the UK, survivors have said.
Patrick Sandford, who was abused by a schoolteacher at the age of nine, said society needed to “get real and wise up” about the scale of the issue.
“It’s an epidemic,” he told The Independent. “We are talking of millions of people walking around and trying to live with this.”
As I have been writing for about 8 years now!
Another survivor, Ruby Joseph, said authorities needed to stop “burying their heads in the sand and pretending it’s not happening”.
“I don’t know how we can call ourselves civilised when so many of our children are being raped and we look the other way,” she added. “It’s going on all the time and it has got to stop.”
Globally, millions of children are being sexually abused every single day. A very small percentage of the paedophiles are ever charged and an even smaller number are convicted.
They are among the survivors giving evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (
IICSA).
Its Truth Project has been gathering anonymous accounts from victims for six years, and is appealing for more people to come forward before it closes later this year.
The evidence will be used in a report looking at the patterns of abuse, and failures by public institutions to protect children.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales estimates that 7.5 per cent of adults aged 18 to 74 years experienced sexual abuse before the age of 16 years, representing 3.1 million people.
Dr Rebekah Eglinton, IICSA’s chief psychologist, believes the figures are the “tip of the iceberg”.
“I think the problem is horrendously larger than we let ourselves admit,” she added. “Our hope is that by giving a voice to survivors, amplifying their experiences and having these conversations, the less space perpetrators have to hide.”
Dr Eglinton said the accounts of more than 5,000 victims who have come forward so far had been “horrific”.
Dr Rebekah Eglinton, IICSA’s chief psychologist
(Tina Vedrine)
“We want to do better, we have to do better,” she added. “I don’t think we can claim ignorance any more about this.”
Dr Eglinton said there was an emerging pattern of abusers creating an “illusion that they are an upstanding member of the community”, and then using that status to intimidate and silence victims.
She described a “sense of blindness” around popular figures, which prevents victims from reporting crimes and can lead to them being ignored or disbelieved when they do.
IICSA was set up in 2014 as a response to the Jimmy Savile revelations, but Dr Eglinton said its research showed that sexual abuse in the UK is not merely a “historical” issue.
“We have heard the same issues are still going on for young people as people in their eighties have talked about,” she added. “It’s shocking.”
Mr Sandford, who is now 69, said the scars from child sexual abuse are “lifelong” and include damage to a survivor’s mental health and their ability to form loving relationships.
“Often it’s only later in life that people are brave enough to look at those scars and examine them,” he added. Those scars can be as strong for children being abused at the moment as it was for me and others abused many years ago.”
Patrick Sandford wrote a play called ‘Groomed’ based on the abuse he suffered
Mr Sandford said he first opened up about the abuse he suffered 20 years ago, and believed that boys and men still feared coming forward because of shame and fears they will be disbelieved, blamed or labelled as gay.
“It takes a long time to admit the truth to yourself, particularly because the person abusing you will swear you to secrecy,” he added.
Mr Sandford wrote a play, Groomed, about his experiences and said that after every performance “somebody comes up afterwards and says ‘this happens to me and I have never told anybody’”.
Ms Joseph, who is now 64, said child sexual abuse was often concealed within families where the perpetrator is the breadwinner or exerts financial control.
She was abused from a young age by her stepfather, and had an abortion arranged by her mother after becoming pregnant at 13.
Ms Joseph said victims past and present “need justice”, adding: “It is going on now but you’re not going to know when it’s happening because the children are silenced by the perpetrators. By the time it gets reported it’s historical but that doesn’t mean you don’t do anything about it; it ruins lives.”
She wrote a letter to Boris Johnson following his 2019 remarks over public money being “spaffed up a wall on some investigation into historic child abuse”.
Ruby Joseph said victims ‘need justice'
“These historical cases have accumulated because no one wanted to do something about it,” Ms Joseph said.
“You’re not going to stop it if you don’t want to know about it. People facilitate it by doing nothing.”
Mr Sandford said “huge resources” should be put into investigating the causes of child sex abuse so it can be prevented.
“We need to understand why people abuse children and do something about it,” he added.
Dr Eglinton said members of the IICSA hoped that its findings would ultimately help prevent abuse and encourage more victims to seek justice.
“It’s really, really difficult to face up to the reality of the extent of child sexual abuse in the country,” she added. “Our hope is the more we talk about this issue, the more it destigmatizes it so people can say ‘actually yes, that happened to me’.”
People can take part in the Truth Project by phone, video call or in writing. Those who want to share their experiences via telephone or video call are asked to get in touch by 31 July, while written accounts will be welcomed until mid-October.
All participants are offered a dedicated support worker to answer any questions or concerns they might have, help them to prepare and give support afterwards.
Madrassa sex abuse rocks Pakistan, again
04 July,2021 06:01 AM IST
| Islamabad
Students recite the Quran at a seminary in Islamabad. Pic/AFP
Religious leaders who hold sway in Pakistan and have often demanded public hanging or punishment for culprits who insult Islam, have this time around found themselves in a sticky situation as a child sex abuse incident inside a madrassa has rocked the nation.
Sabir Shah, a student at a Lahore religious school stated that he was sexually abused by Mufti Aziz ur Rehman for over a year. Shortly after that, a video surfaced and went viral on the Internet, in which another child complained of sexual abuse involving a Shiite cleric.
People are blaming religious seminaries and the clerics for their vicious sexual desires, a claim that is vehemently rejected by the clerics, who refuse to concede that their educational institutions or clerics are at fault.
“They [religious clerics] teach the syllabus of their choice, collect funds and use them in their own ways. Whenever there is a case registered and a process of accountability is initiated against these clerics, they use their power and intimidation to stop it,” said Nasreen Jalil, former chairperson of the Senate Committee on human rights.
Experts say that many cases of child abuse by clerics happen because the clerics know that the child’s claim is less likely to be believed. “This prompts the children to not report such cases of sexual assaults and encourages clerics to go on doing what they do with impunity,” said Dr Naila Aziz, a clinical psychologist.
There is a matter of pride in some of the countries on the Indian sub-continent where people just refuse to believe that their 'holy men' are capable of heinous sexual crimes against children. In reality, these are easily some of the worst countries in the world to be a child.
Nine sex offenders every parent in St Helens, UK needs to know about
Some were caught out in paedophile hunter stings while others had horrific images and videos
Liverpool echo
L-R Trevor Smith, Paul Roberts and Adam Whitfield
So far this year, abusive and exploitative predators who targeted vulnerable children have shocked ECHO readers.
In the last six months, a range of horrific cases with links to St Helens have been brought before our courts, from young children who were targeted online to victims who were preyed upon in real life.
From using popular video games to groom children to sickening threats and abuse, their crimes horrified readers when they were first reported.
The impact this kind of abuse can have on its victims and those around them is life long and severe.
To make parents and guardians aware of the ways in which predators can target and groom children - often through social media and online platforms - we have put together a list of some of these men and their crimes linked to St Helens.
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