Marc Fox (Image: South Wales Police)
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A paedophile from Porth who used concealed equipment to secretly access the internet and download indecent images of children – some depicting victims as young as two – has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Sentencing
Marc Fox, 50, appeared at Cardiff Crown Court on Wednesday where Judge Paul Hobson handed him a three-year prison sentence with an extended licence period of five years. Fox will remain subject to sex offender notification requirements indefinitely.
Sentencing him, Judge Hobson said: “You are a 50-year-old paedophile with a troubling history of sexual offending. You have been before the courts on a number of occasions and it does not seem to have deterred you in any way.”
What police found
Officers visited Fox at his address in Porth on August 26 last year and discovered he had devices designed to conceal his internet activity from his managing officer – a direct breach of his sexual harm prevention order (SHPO).
A laptop was also seized which contained an extensive library of indecent images of children, many classified as category A – the most serious classification of child sexual abuse material. One image shown to the court depicted a two-year-old child being sexually abused and visibly distressed.
The laptop also contained written stories describing child abuse. The court heard the most extreme example involved a child in a mortuary being abused.
Judge Hobson said: “It’s difficult to imagine anything more repulsive than that.”
He added: “In addition it’s plain from other material recovered, despite all the regimes in place, your sexual obsession with children continues.”
Previous offending
Fox was first convicted in 2006 of three counts of indecently assaulting a girl and possessing indecent images of children. He received a two-year prison sentence with a four-year extended licence and was made subject to a SHPO.
Despite this, he was convicted again in 2016 for possessing indecent images and in 2022 for distributing an indecent image of a child.
Mitigation
The court heard in mitigation that Fox had been “candid” about his actions following his arrest. However, his repeated failure to comply with the SHPO meant he was assessed as posing a high risk of committing further offences against children.
