UK Legal News

A man has been sentenced to a five month imprisonment, suspended for two years for the possession of extreme porn. He was also ordered to complete an internet offenders course, and pay a £880 fine

Keith Dorrington used a work laptop to download images and videos that showed women having sex with a Great Dane, a snake and a horse. Jurors also heard of images which involved acts which could have damaged the genitals.

The images were reported to police after bosses at Ford's Dagenham dealership found unusual internet traffic on their devices. He admitted four charges of possession of images of people and animals and four counts of possession of films of people and animals.

Dorrington said:

I didn't understand that the extreme material was unlawful but I accept that it was wrong to download it.

Daniel Murgatroyd has been sentenced for possession of three extreme pornography movies and 36 still images featuring bestiality. He was given a three month prison sentence suspended for 12 months, and was made the subject of a 12 months supervision order. He must also do 200 hours of unpaid work, and pay a £500 fine.

This came to light after police raided the shared house. The court heard officers executed a search warrant following intelligence that somebody at the address was accessing images of child abuse. No prosecution was brought against one of this housemates in relation to those pictures after the images were found to be tiny thumbnail photos, but in the course of the investigation all the computers in house were searched -- and Murgatroyd's animal pornography was found.

A former probationary Metropolitan Police officer has been fined £430 after sending a bad taste joke in the form of an extreme pornographic image to his colleagues.

Jack McGillivray pleaded guilty at London's Westminster Magistrates Court to publishing an obscene article on July 31.

Prosecutor Edmund Hall said McGillivray had promptly accepted that he had sent a single image, which he had received from a friend, to both male and female police trainees while he was on a course.

McGillivray said he had done it humorously and later apologised for causing any offence, has handed in his resignation and is currently suspended.

Deputy chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot heartlessly told McGillivray that she accepted his explanation that it was just a joke but told him it was one which has now had catastrophic consequences . You are about to lose your job and you are about to lose your good character.

An anime fan has made legal history as he was convicted of having illegal pictures of cartoon children. Robul Hoquei is believed to be the first UK victim of the Dangerous Cartoons Act hauled before court over his collection of Japanese Manga and anime.

He admitted 10 counts of possessing prohibited cartoon images of children at Teesside Crown Court .

His barrister Richard Bennett said: These are not what would be termed as paedophilic images. These are cartoons. And he noted that such banned images were freely available on legitimate sites. He said:

This case should serve as a warning to every Manga and Anime fan to be careful. It seems there are many thousands of people in this country, if they are less then careful, who may find themselves in that position too.

Police found the images when they seized Hoque's computer from his home on June 13, 2012, said prosecutor Harry Hadfield. He said officers found 288 still and 99 moving images, but none were of real people.

Hoque was given a nine-month prison sentence suspended for two years.

Comment: More dangerous drawings

From Angelus Section 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009

The article claims this is the first time that "dangerous drawings" charges under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (C&JA) have been brought solely in regard to Japanese anime/manga style images (presumably as opposed to things like "Simpsons porn" as in another recent case). There were other charges originally brought but subsequently dropped, and the nature of these charges suggests that the accused was possibly already under a supervision order following his prior conviction for possession of indecent pseudo-photographs of children, which is also mentioned in the article. So this is a convicted sex offender, a convenient piece of low-hanging fruit on which to see if charges under Section 62 of the C&JA could be made to stick.

In the end, the accused entered a guilty plea, which given his situation seems understandable as it probably helped him to avoid prison. However, I am again concerned at some of the reporting from the courtroom, which suggests once more that the bar for conviction under this law is being set far too low. When the initial draft of what was to become the C&JA was first introduced into Parliament, there was considerable disquiet among some MPs and peers because of the possible impact of Section 62 on freedom of expression and genuine works of art. In response, it was stated on behalf of the Government that the wording of the Act was intended to catch only those images at the "upper end of the scale", images that would already be criminally obscene under existing legislation. To me, the wording makes it quite clear that the criminal obscenity of an image needs to be established in order to secure a conviction, but the article's description of some of the images in question leaves me in considerable doubt that this wording is being applied correctly.

The most chilling comment, though, comes from the defence barrister, who is reported as warning every anime and manga fan in the country to be careful lest they put themselves at risk of prosecution. If that is how the C&JA is now being interpreted then it clearly has gone way beyond its original intended scope. I can only hope that the first person charged under this Act who dares to enter a "not guilty" plea somehow manages to assemble a defence team that is up to the task of proving that this has happened.

Update from Angelus in response to a query about the origins of quotes:

The phrase upper end of the scale may not have been used verbatim in the Commons in regard to the C&JA, but can definitely be inferred from the minutes of the C&JA Commons committee meetings. For example, on day 2, a spokesman for the IWF said , I understand that the desire of Government, in this instance in particular, is to catch content at the upper end of sadistic levels.

The latest victim of the Dangerous Pictures Act is Richard Blackmore who has been convicted of possessing extreme pornography.

He admitted seven offences and was ordered to receive two years supervision. He also made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order which allows police to monitor Blackmore's internet usage and ordered the destruction of the two laptops once family photographs have been removed and saved.  He also lost his job as a result of the case.

Blackmore was found with films and images which he downloaded from the internet on two different occasions. When police seized his laptop he bought another one and downloaded more images of bestiality involving horses, cattle and dogs.

Blackmore was arrested after police raided his family home and seized a laptop on which they found 427 still and 18 movie images showing sex with animals. His home was searched again eight months later and another laptop was found with 434 more still images.

A teenager went berserk when a judge ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the hard drive from his laptop.

The 16-year-old admitted possessing 'AN' extreme pornographic image involving sex with an animal.

He didn't react when he was made subject to a referral order but hurled abuse at District Judge Alan Jones when he made the forfeiture order.

The boy swore at the judge who ordered a police officer in court to arrest the teenager and there was a violent struggle before he was taken out of court.

When the question of forfeiture had first been raised the boy had said he wouldn't be responsible for what happened if the order was made.

A Devon man has fallen victim to the Dangerous Pictures Act.

Richard Blackmore admitted seven charges of possessing extreme pornography between October last year and February this year involving people having sex with dogs, horses, cows, ponies and other assorted live animals .

Exeter magistrates heard police searched Blackmore's home on an unconnected matter and found more than 850 still images and 18 movie files on two computers.

Blackmore, who has no previous convictions, was bailed to appear before a judge for sentencing and told he faces a prison sentence.

A man is facing jail over cartoon pictures of Bart Simpson having sex with his sister Lisa and mother Marge. Other images showed Bart having sex with his teacher Mrs Krabappel as well as his best friend Millhouse having sex with his mother.

Andrew Smith, who is a full-time carer for his 87-year-old mother, was found guilty of nine counts of possessing prohibited images of children after 36 sketches, drawings, cartoons and computer-generated images, many showing sexual relationships between children and older relatives, were found on disks at his home.

All of the images were cartoons, sketches, drawings or CGIs. None were actual photographs.

The jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict after about 40 minutes.

Smith will be sentenced on August 29 at Carlisle Crown Court.

Comment: A Dangerous Path

13th August 2014. From Angelus

t's perfectly normal for me to be shocked and stunned by what I read in the Mail, but this time it was the quotes from the courtroom that left me shocked and wondering what was going on.

The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (C&JA) is very specific when it comes to the subject of prohibited images of children . These are defined as images that satisfy all the parts of a three part test. So, firstly an image of a child must be pornographic , which is defined as being of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal. Secondly, it must depict one or more of a shopping list of body parts or actions involving said body parts. Thirdly, it must be criminally obscene, or in the words of the Act, grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character.

Starting with the third test, obscenity, this Act follows the formula first used in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. This wording caused quite a debate in Parliament at the time, despite Government assertions that it was simply intended to bring the definition of obscenity into the 21st century rather than materially change it, and to supposedly make it more compatible with Human Rights legislation which required laws to be objective rather than subjective. During its passage through the House of Lords, the Lib Dems attempted to amend the Act by replacing this wording with a direct reference to the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (OPA). However, this was successfully rebuffed by the Government when a Minister stated that this amendment could actually widen the scope of the Act. So, we are left with the clear message from the legislators themselves that obscenity within the meaning of the C&JA is to be interpreted no less stringently than the OPA, and possibly even more stringently. So, referring to the Crown Prosecution Service's guidelines for the OPA, only things like bestiality, realistic portrayals of rape, torture, mutilation and so on are likely to be considered criminally obscene. An image of two people engaged in non-abusive sex would certainly not be classed as obscene. Of course, possession of a photograph of a child having sex would certainly (and rightly) be prosecuted, but not because it is obscene as such.

The second test is clear in some parts and not so clear in others, but in the case of an image of an adult having sex with a child there is no doubt that it would be satisfied. The first test though relies in a Crown court on the jury to determine whether an image was produced for the purposes of sexual arousal and is therefore pornographic , but I fail to see how anyone other than, let's just say, a very special sort of person could think that an image of Simpsons sex could ever be sexually arousing - almost certainly they were produced as a bad-taste joke. However, we then hear the defence stating in mitigation that the accused did not download the images for sexual gratification , which is not relevant, and may even have misled jury members into believing that it was the motive of the accused rather than the motive of the original artist that they needed to decide on. The Mail article is admittedly a little unclear about exactly what images were being prosecuted because it states that the police found 36 images of children having sex but only 9 charges resulted, so it's possible the Simpsons ones may not actually have been involved. But if they were involved then I fail to see how could they could have been found to be illegal as they were clearly not pornographic within the terms of the Act. And if they were among the 27 images that were reckoned to be legal, or at least having a low probability of achieving a conviction, how is it that they could be mentioned in court? If someone is being prosecuted for, say, stealing jewellery, how can the fact that they have other jewellery in their home that can't be proven to be stolen be used as part of the case against them? I suppose we shall never know exactly what the images that resulted in the charges were like. Which of itself is rather Kafkaesque, as modern Human Rights-compatible law is supposed to give people a clear idea of what is legal and what isn't.

One thing that really is clear, though, is that if all of these three test need to be satisfied before the law is broken, that also means by extension that they are independent, as otherwise why would it be necessary to specify anything more than the most restrictive test of the three? This means that if an image of a child having sex is pornographic (so tests 1 and 2 are satisfied), that cannot mean per se that it is also obscene as obscenity is a separate test. And yet here we have a quote from the prosecution stating There's nothing proper and sensible and indeed certainly not legal about pornographic images of children . As just explained, this is not automatically true. Perhaps that misleading remark influenced the jury, perhaps not, again we shall probably never know.

Once again, the whole issue of how dangerous drawings prosecutions are conducted is brought into question. Leaving aside for the moment the possibility that nobody involved in this case - police, prosecution, defence or judge - properly understood the law involved, the C&JA has claimed another victim. Even if we might find the accused and his ideas repugnant, that should not be relevant in the courtroom as the case should be tried on the facts alone, but it seems to me that he was tried just as much for those ideas as he was for the images in his possession. A photograph of a child having sex (or arguably, even posing erotically) is a record of the criminal abuse of a vulnerable human being, and as such, creating or possessing such a photograph is rightly prosecuted. However, a drawing, no matter what it is of, is a record of an idea . To criminalise the transmission of ideas is to start down a dangerous path. As the late John Mortimer QC famously put it in his opening arguments for the defence at the Oz trial in 1971, the defendants then stood at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and write what we please. One of those freedoms has now been lost -- how long will it be before the other two are lost as well?

As a postscript, the final irony is that had the accused lived 60 miles further north he would have had no case to answer, because these images that are so filthy, obscene and very disturbing that possessing them is worthy of up to three years in prison are perfectly legal in Scotland.

Comment: Bizarre

14th August 2014. From Alan

This seems utterly bizarre.

Was the bloke represented by a specialist lawyer? Am I right in thinking that the material must be produced for the purposes of sexual arousal?

I could understand someone getting done under this law -- absurd as it is -- for possessing erotic manga/anime with characters having the extremely youthful features which form part of the artistic convention. But the SIMPSONS???? Is anybody going to get turned on by totally unrealistic yellow people engaging in sexual congress?

I hope he can mount an appeal.

Two men have been convicted of possessing truly disgusting pornography on their mobile phones - despite being sent the material from people they did not know.

Old Bailey judge Paul Worsley QC said the content, found on the phones of respectable defendants Gary Ticehurst and Mark Kelly, was intended for shock value .

The videos and image were later recovered by police after they stopped the defendants on an unrelated matter.

Sentencing the defendants to a conditional discharge but each being made to pay £500 costs, judge Worsley admitted the punishment was lenient but said neither man had solicited the extreme content. But he warned:

You have pleaded guilty to possessing truly disgusting images. It makes a big difference if someone goes out of their way to seek it, or if they're sent it by some mischievous colleague.

In your case it was unsolicited. This is an exceptional case in some ways. The public should not find this carte blanche to possess material of this nature.

Kelly pleaded guilty to one count of possessing an extreme pornographic image likely to cause injury, and three counts of possessing pornographic images involving animals.

Ticehurs admitted one count of one count of possessing an extreme pornographic image likely to cause injury, and two counts of possessing pornographic images involving animals.

Defending himself in court, Kelly said he was sent the material by an unknown person via Whatsapp. He said:

I deleted the videos from my Whatsapp, but I had no ideas they would save to my camera roll. I didn't even watch the full content of the video.

Update: A few more details

3rd August 2014. From courtnewsuk.co.uk

The two friends were caught with the extreme pornography after being stopped by police at Fenchurch Street Station in central London. They included a man pumping air into his disfigured genitals, a man having sex with an amputee (there's nothing in the Dangerous Pictures act that catches this) and a woman having sex with a horse.

Comment: And MPs said that the law would be only used in a few extreme cases

4th August 2014. From phantom See article from Melon Farmers Forum

When this ghastly law was going through parliament we were given no end of rhetoric how this only applied to the most depraved cases. This would only ever catch cases which were so extreme they were in danger of falling off the end of the shelf. The extreme end of extreme, so to speak. They were very insistent on this.

You remember the impact assessment? Only 12 estimated prosecutions? Thus no significant impact.

We're now running at a thousand cases per year and two guys who thought they'd deleted material they never asked for have just been done.

The lie that was told to parliament has by now become so big, it makes you want to scream.

A man has been jailed for 18 months after being caught selling bestiality porn DVDs for the second time. The man admitted to police he dealt in porn DVDs by sending catalogues out to customers, so they could order what they wanted.

In a previous conviction he escaped prison. On that occasion, he distributed the DVDs on an agency basis for a company called Euroscan, who were based abroad.

Now, he has been jailed after pleading guilty to two charges of selling obscene DVDs and two of possessing extreme pornographic DVDs. Locking him up for 18 months, Judge Paul Sloan QC said:

5,000 DVDs depicting pornography were seized. They had been boxed-up according to category. Of those, in the region of 250 to 300 depicted bestiality.

You said you did this because you wished to provide for your family but you were aware what you were doing was both wrong and illegal. This was serious offending. It was a commercial enterprise and the fact you have previous convictions for life offending is an aggravating factor.

A former shop owner who was prosecuted for selling hardcore porn DVDs has been handed a 12-month community order and told he must complete 120 hours of unpaid work. He was also fined £560.

Nadeem Raja pleaded guilty to four charges relating to the supply of explicit material without a BBFC classification and in a place other than a licensed sex shop, as well as infringing copyright laws.

Burton Magistrates' Court heard Trading Standards staff from East Staffordshire Borough Council and Staffordshire County Council made a visit to Booze City in Derby Street on April 25 last year after a complaint was made that explicit material was being sold on the premises. Khalid Mahmood, prosecuting, said:

During this visit 36 DVDs were seized. On June 10 a sample of six was sent away and on June 18 we received a report stating that out of these six, three DVDs were genuine, however they were classified as R18, a restricted classification. They are only permitted for sale in licensed cinemas and sex shops.

In addition, the other three DVDs that had been sent away were found to be copies of the original disks, meaning that they had infringed section 114 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

A man has been barred from the committee of an Edinburgh neighbourhood centre after he was convicted for possessing extreme pornography.

Gary Slow, previously a committee member at Bingham Community Centre, was ejected by fellow leaders at a recent annual general meeting, shortly after they were told about the conviction. Slow pleaded guilty at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in November after unspecified prohibited material was found in his possession, but most likely animal porn.

Senior staff at the centre said they were angry that council authorities failed to inform them immediately and claimed the lack of awareness had affected their ability to do their jobs properly. They also claimed they had been gagged from disclosing details of the conviction to others because it could lead to Slow coming to harm, presumably from community members with a lynch mob mentality.

Court documents confirm Slow pleaded guilty to the offence of possessing extreme pornographic images after police were given permission to search his home in August 2012. He was issued with a community payback order and told to undertake 120 hours of unpaid work. His name was also added to the sex offenders register but later recalled after it was decided the offence did not meet the threshold at which full inclusion was necessary.

A source said:

He was there at the meeting and he was told he was barred. We told him, 'you need to leave, we cannot have you here'. I don't want to see the guy murdered... BUT ...he's walking around our community and he's a member of other voluntary groups and it's just not sitting right.

A 71-year-old man who admitted possessing almost 1,500 extreme pornographic images of bestiality has been given a three year community order that will include attendance at a community sex offender programme and only allow him to live at an address approved by his supervising officer.

Police found the images on the computer of Alfred Edge when they visited his home, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told yesterday.

Edge, who had no previous convictions, pleaded guilty to possessing 1,460 extreme pornographic images of people involved in sexual acts with animals, and also to possessing a further 27 moving images of the same nature.

Jasvir Mann, defending, told the court: He feels absolute disgrace over these proceedings. He is thoroughly ashamed. He made a serious mistake but even at his age he has the wish and the ability to change. He does not have a computer any more and has no intention of ever having one again.

Judge John Wait told him during his sentencing: I do not regard it as being in the public interest to send you to prison at the public expense. It will be far better for you to be required to go on a programme that will address this kind of offending. This is a vile crime.

Comment: sanctimony

From Alan

I suppose sanctimony goes with appointment to the judiciary, but the learned judge's comment that this is a vile crime takes the biscuit. This is a crime magicked up out of nowhere by the Blair/Brown regime in its dying days.

An unlicensed sex shop owner has been jailed after about 1,500 porn films were seized from his business.

Donald McEwan was arrested after trading standards raids on Triple X Factor Adult Superstore on Oldham Street in Manchester last year.

Police and council officers recovered 743 DVDs in April and another 749 during a second visit in September.

The films seized were either unclassified or were classified as R18, which can only be sold in a licensed sex shop.

McEwan was handed down an eight-month sentence for the supply and possession of unclassified films when he appeared before Manchester magistrates court.

A gay sex cinema has lost its battle with Islington Council to get back its licence and now faces imminent closure. A council snitch had reported that he had visited and found men kissing and fondling each other.

On Wednesday, a Highbury Magistrates' Court district judge rejected an appeal by the owners, after finding the licensee Mr Papworth had a complete failure of understanding of the rules.

Cllr Paul Convery, a moralist prude who had campaigned against the cinema for months said:

People might say this is the council moralising, but it really isn't. What people get up to in private is up to them ...BUT... this is not in private, it's a public place in a high street and if they breach lawful conditions, consequences follow. We're not being prudish; we're reflecting public opinion.

Resident and film historian David McGillivray called the decision to revoke Oscars licence, The end of an era:

I believe it has always served a small minority of men who are mainly respectable and well-behaved. London was once full of these establishments but now there are very few left. I hope people are not making moral judgments about this venue, which adds to the variety and diversity of the area.

The council was awarded full costs of £7,775 from Oscars.

Update: Unappealing Appeal

16th June 2014

Abcat gay cinema on the Caledonian Road in Kings Cross was set to appeal against Islington Council revoking the cinema licence. But the loss of a very similar appeal by Oscar's cinema led to the venue dropping the appeal. The outlook seems grim for the cinema.

PC James Addison has been fined £ 6,000 for sending 'obscene' images to colleagues outside Downing Street. He sent videos on his mobile phone, including images of people defecating, found to be in breach of the Obscene Publications Act while he worked as a protection officer at prime minister David Cameron's home.

He was arrested in December by officers who were investigating the Andew Mitchell Plebgate affair. Addison pleaded guilty to 11 charges. He will face an internal Scotland Yard investigation now that he has received his punishment.

District judge Howard Riddle, sentencing at Westminster Magistrates' Court, said:

Even at a time when the state has retreated to a huge extent in sexual judgment and taste and humour, these images go some way beyond what is legal in this country. These images are very unusual indeed.

Perhaps the greatest harm is that at least some of these images were received and sent while you were working and while you were being paid by the public to carry out a very important task on behalf of the public.

[Then why was he punished for obscenity rather than dereliction of duties?]

Update: A shitty job anyway

14th June 2014. See  article from  bbc.co.uk

A Downing Street police officer who shared extreme pornography on his phone while on duty has been dismissed.

PC James Addison sent pornographic videos and stills to colleagues using a social networking app while working as a protection officer at Downing Street.

A business man who organised weekly sex parties with porn stars has been ordered to repay £15,000 of the profits or face nine months in jail.

Patrick Stewart organised orgies with porn stars. He set up a bondage area, a porn room with a wide screen television and double beds for couples to watch each other have sex and swap partners across two flats in Tower Hamlets, east London.

The orgies were advertised online as gentlemen's parties , and the women, who were from South America, Eastern Europe and Britain, were paid around £150 for four hours work. But the parties were spoilt by miserable police who raided the events. A policeman described the event as an orgy and I think that is a fair reflection of what was taking place at the premises. Around 19 customers and numerous scantily-clad women were present when Staddon was arrested at the scene.

In August last year, Stewart was handed a 14-month sentence suspended for two years and was ordered to complete 200 hours unpaid work and fines £750. Stewart set up the brothels in Fairfield Road, Bow and Fun Times in White Post Lane, Hackney Wick in 2007. He recruited Russell Staddon and Shahid Latif to run the parties on a weekly basis.

Stewart; Staddon and Latif, all admitted conspiracy to control prostitution for gain and money laundering. Last August Staddon was sentenced to 10 months, suspended for two years, and was also ordered to complete 150 hours unpaid work and fined £250. Latif received a four-month sentence, also suspended for two years, fined £275 and ordered to complete 80 hours unpaid work.

The creator of a fake swingers website defrauded more than £200,000 from people looking for casual sex.

Andrew Harris conned hundreds of victims for four years by charging them £40 to access titilating but fake profiles. The scam continued as victims thought better of exposing their sexual interests to the authorities.

Eventually a man contacted trading standards and this led to charges and conviction. The man known as TB - told Birmingham Crown Court he and his partner were surprised at the number of open-minded people on the remote island of Anglesey. Anglesey is not renowned for its swinging scene, the court heard. After exchanging a few messages with a number of contacts, the couple were blocked and ordered to pay a subscription fee to continue. They did - but the interested users suddenly disappeared without trace.

Fearing a scam, TB set up a different profile and received exactly the same messages from the same people. He contacted Birmingham Trading Standards, who followed up and verified the complaint.

Harris was jailed for 2 years and ordered to pay about £60,000 in fines and costs.

A man has fallen victim to the Dangerous Pictures Act after admitting downloading extreme pornographic images.

Brian McNiece from Derby had downloaded 119 images and 62 movies on his computer in 2011.

Handing McNiece a three-year community order at Derby Crown Court, Recorder Shaun Smith QC preached:

You're 25 years of age, with no previous convictions and in work -- and heaven knows why your inquisitiveness led you to looking at this type of depraved behaviour.

A former PA was jailed yesterday for being the madam of a despicable gang which trafficked more than 50 Hungarian women to Britain to work as sex slaves.

Victoria Brown became the logistical organiser in the gang, which made £ 20,000 a week from prostitutes in hotels, brothels and even a university halls of residence. Brown organised flights, booked hotel rooms, collected money and took victims' passports.

Women were flown to Britain on EasyJet and Wizz Air flights and forced to have sex with up to 15 men a day. Many were recruited from deprived parts of Hungary and told they would be working in the massage industry. They were put up in hotels around Gatwick, in flats across the South East and in Bristol and Norwich as well as in Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff and Glasgow.

Women were advertised on sex websites as fresh meat and threatened with exposure at home if they fled. The gang collected £ 100 an hour but kept most of the money for themselves while refusing to hand back passports until the women had paid off their debts . Defendant

Hove Crown Court heard Brown acted as loyal lieutenant to gang ringleader Mate Puskas, who was also her boyfriend and the father of her 21-month-old son. Jailing her for three years yesterday, Judge Richard Hayward told her:

It is very sad to see you in the dock. You are intelligent, you come from a respectable family, you had a good job, and you threw it all away for Mate Puskas.

Sentencing Puskas to six years in jail, the judge told him he was at the centre of the conspiracy and very much in control . Zoltan Mohacs was jailed for four years. Istvan Toth was sentenced to five years and his brother Peter -- who was described in court as a gentleman pimp because of his politeness to some of the victims -- for four years. Both are on the run after breaking bail.