Army Cadet leader sentenced for child abuse images

A former Army Cadet leader from Carmarthen has been sentenced after admitting to collecting and sharing images of children being sexually abused.

Michael Monks, 55, of Russell Terrace, Carmarthen, was exposed as a paedophile after police executed a search warrant at his home in May 2022 and seized his phone.

Forensic examination of the Huawei device revealed four dozen indecent images of children – including 25 of Category A showing the most serious kinds of sexual abuse – along with three photos depicting bestiality.

Investigators also discovered Monks was part of a group on the Wickr encrypted app where like-minded individuals were chatting and “trading” indecent images. As well as receiving images from other group members, he had swapped four of his own images with others.

At the time of his arrest, Monks had been a leader at the Army Cadet centre in Llanelli.

During his subsequent interview, Monks denied having any sexual interest in children – a stance he maintained until minutes before his sentencing hearing at Swansea Crown Court.

Judge Paul Thomas KC told Monks: “The images of children found on your phone were of real children somewhere in the world being horribly abused so people like you – that is, paedophiles – could masturbate over them.”

The judge added: “If I had a pound for every time a defendant had told a court he had viewed such images simply out of curiosity I would now have my own Caribbean island.”

Judge Thomas said it was concerning that Monks had only just accepted that he had a sexual interest in children and had found sexual gratification in viewing the images. He said that for any meaningful work to be done with offenders they first had to acknowledge there was a problem.

Monks’ advocate, Dan Griffiths, said his client’s reluctance to admit he has a sexual interest in children may be due to “embarrassment” rather than anything else. He said there had been no further offending in the three-and-a-half years since his arrest which demonstrated “he has the ability to contain whatever urges he had, whatever underlying issues caused him to behave in the way he did”.

The advocate added that Monks acts as a carer for his wife and had expressed a willingness to comply with any order the court saw fit to make. He also said the delay in the case was “unconscionable”.

Monks pleaded guilty to three counts of possessing indecent images of children of Categories A, B, and C, three counts of making indecent images of children of Categories A, B, and C, two counts of distributing indecent images of children of Categories B and C, and possessing extreme pornography. He has no previous convictions.

With a one-third discount for his guilty pleas, Monks was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for 12 months.

He was also ordered to complete a rehabilitation course designed to address his sexual offending and to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work in the community. Monks will be a registered sex offender for the next 10 years and was made subject to a sexual harm prevention order to control his access to the internet for the same length of time.

Judge Thomas said no doubt the Army Cadet organisation would take such steps as were necessary given the defendant’s conviction.

The court heard that police had received the forensic report detailing the phone’s contents in March 2023 but only approached the Crown Prosecution Service for charging advice in January 2025. The prosecutor said it had to be accepted there was “no reasonable explanation” for the delay. Judge Thomas described the delay as “wholly unacceptable”.