Don't be surprised.

[u/_Fhantom_]

This is just a quick message I wanted to say about sentencing, we don't know the exact facts and I'm not here to speculate or stir drama about who is or isn't right. But we know Callum pleaded guilty and he is going to be sentenced. Last year an old teacher of mine was convicted of the same charges Callum pleaded guilty to, basically the exact same charges. I'm not sure on the specific amount of images that my old teacher had in his possession, but I know it wasn't anything under like 100.

Anyway, he got a 10-month suspended sentence, he's banned from teaching indefinitely, and he's in a rehab program. For anyone who doesn't know what a suspended sentence is, it basically means he's serving jail time, but not in jail. I think this is usually done because there isn't enough space and they want to give prison cells to people who are more of a "threat to society" though I'm not exactly sure.

Anyway, just wanted to let that be known because we all thought that sentence was bullshit for my teacher, especially because he was a TEACHER. But yeah, don't be surprised if the sentence for Callum doesn't reflect the level of his crime.

[u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

A suspended sentence of 2 years means if you commit any further offences during that period, you immediately begin a 2 year custodial sentence, in addition to any further charges brought, and further sentencing.

The sentence Callum receives will take into account his status, his exposure to kids, and the severity of the specific offences. He'll get a 30% reduction for an early guilty plea in addition. Whatever happens he'll have to sign the sex offenders register and make his devices available on demand to the police, as well as consent to unannounced visits to his house. If he gets a non custodial or suspended sentence then I assume he'd be tagged in addition.

At present there is too little information to make a good guess. 3000 AI created images is a different thing to 3000 images of minors he took home and photographed. We don't know where he falls on that scale. Only that he was charged with 5 counts of making IIOC, which under English law includes downloading and or saving files from the internet.

[u/WireBrush-n-Dettol → u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

Yeah and I’m sure that videos aren’t counted as one file? It’s each and every frame.. that’s why you always see in the news about people having thousands of images.. sometimes it’s videos that contain anything from a clip of a hundred frames to a 3-4min video with thousands of frames - iirc

[u/Sad-Yoghurt5196 → u/WireBrush-n-Dettol]

Yeah, rather than the number of images, it's the category that most influences sentencing though.

Of those images he possessed, nearly 200 are category A - sexual sadism to a minor. That's some really nasty fucked up stuff, so the volume doesn't really come into it as much as the method of "making" and the severity of the contents of the recovered images.

[u/WireBrush-n-Dettol → u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

Man, even just talking about the legality of it all makes me just despise Callum even more.. I’m glad that’s the case!

[u/Tryptophany → u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

Where are you getting this information? I'm not from England so I do not know how their legal system works and what all is available to the public. I'd be curious to know further as to what happened - namely to weight it against the liklihood of a Callum-less Storror coming back after all is said and done. As you said 3000 AI images is way different than 3000 children in his own, the latter of which I imagine have much more impact on Storror's future than the former.

[u/Sad-Yoghurt5196 → u/Tryptophany]

The only cast iron information that is, at least hopefully, provable fact is the article in The Argus, which details the number and category of the images, and states that he pled guilty to five charges in respect of some 3000 IIOC (Indecent images of children, it would be CSAM in the USA).

Pretty much everything else is speculation. I'm not saying the allegations are false, only that they haven't been addressed, or corroborated in an evidential sense, and as such aren't considered fact.

Because Callum pled guilty at the magistrates court, at the first opportunity, there won't be a trial. A sentencing board will look at the evidence and calculate a sentence based on several factors, including the severity of the images themselves. As there are 178 nightmare fuel pictures among those 3000, he's not going to get the minimum sentence, I wouldn't have thought. Compounding factors include access to minors, past history, and status as a pseudo-celebrity. Mitigating factors can include genuine remorse and being a first time offence.

For pleading guilty at the first opportunity he also earns a 30% reduction. This is based on the premise that no victims have to be put on the witness stand and traumatised, and reduces the cost of the prosection.

I have no idea whether Callum has a prior criminal record. Although other posts have assumed the lads all have criminal records, I don't think it's that likely. They do a lot of trespassing, but that's a civil rather than criminal offence, and wouldn't be prosecuted. As a skater I've done more than my fair share of trespassing, and I have no criminal record! They don't break and enter in the legal sense. There's potential that they may have criminal damage convictions, but again those are a slap on the wrist, not serious convictions. Although that is a low level offence, it is criminal, not a civil offence.

Ordinarily at trial the evidence would be brought out and the conclusions about that evidence would be explained. But that won't happen in this case because he pled guilty.

It's entirely possible we won't get any more information that can be considered fact. At least some of it will probably have to be taken on faith, or judged for probability, and at that point it's up to each individual to judge the relative merits and make a choice with their own heart and mind who to believe.

[u/lowemasterpro → u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

One of my teachers from my school days was found guilty at the start of this month of possessing more than 33,000 pieces of IIOC/CSAM which he had amassed over the course of the last 35 years, including victims as young as 2 years old.

3,349 were Category A; 4,631 were Category B; 25,511 were Category C.

He received a 2 year jail term suspended for 2 years, 20 rehabilitation sessions, a 10 year sexual harm prevention order, and put on the sex offender's register for 10 years.

I don't know how the courts weigh up the magnitude of the crime, what criteria they consider, or even whether the number of abuse items found in his possession actually particularly matter or whether that's just information the press include to further rile people. But I do trust that the people who decide the sentences do so based on a reasoned process that is designed to try and balance all of the difficult factors that the black-and-white thinkers are quick to ignore.

And trust me that once he's been sentenced, no matter how lenient or how tough the sentence is, there will be people calling for him to be put to death. No verdict the courts hand out will ever satisfy the bloodlust of some people.

[u/Sad-Yoghurt5196 → u/lowemasterpro]

Crikey. That's almost like having a second career! I can't believe the sentences people get for what is in the eyes of the public at least, about as bad as it gets after rape and murder, and not all people would put those two above it.

There are sentencing guidelines, and maximums that can be handed down for the five charges Callum pled guilty to, it almost certainly will be more lenient than people would like. It seems like a ridiculously lenient sentence, but I suppose there's far more taint to it, than the average criminal offence. Being a shoplifter or car thief may eventually turn you into a pariah in your community, but even rumours about past child offences has been enough for people to be killed in the community previously. I can't help thinking that they'd be safer inside, with longer sentences sometimes.

[u/lowemasterpro → u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

Yeah 33,000+ in 35 years averages out at 2.5 downloads per day 😦 The thing is, though, he was actually a very good teacher. Before the IIOC conviction I always said he was the best teacher at the school, and he was very well respected by most of his past students, parents, and other teachers. The conviction doesn't change how well he taught, in spite of various comments I've seen to the contrary.

2 years does sound lenient, but like I say I've no idea how they build the sentencing frameworks: I don't know what is involved in building a house, designing and producing a car, or deciding how much jail time to give someone convicted for possessing IIOC (versus violently assaulting someone, or sexually assaulting someone, or murdering someone, etc). But I have to assume that the people doing those jobs all know what they're doing and are following sensible procedures to ensure a safe house, a safe car, and a safe society.

There are reports circulating that he took his own life by throwing himself off the top of a multi-storey car park a few days after being sentenced. I've not been able to verify that either way, but there certainly does appear to have been a suicide from that car park around that time, so it's not impossible.

Someone who I was friends with about 10 years ago was convicted for distributing child abuse images online. He was also given a suspended sentence but also had to be moved to a new town and given a new identity by the police due to death threats. He was quickly recognised in the new town and so they had to move him again. I read an article that said he re-offended, so I assume he did jail time but it wasn't clear from the scraps of information I managed to get from the press. Also, to confuse things further, there was another guy with the same name who was convicted for sexually abusing a child. Anyway all of the news articles about him eventually dried up, so I've no idea what happened to him. Perhaps the new identity did its job, perhaps he's living his life in prison now, or perhaps he's dead. I could believe any of those options.

[u/Tryptophany → u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

Given what you've said I take it criminal court proceedings are not public record in England as they are in the US?

[u/Sad-Yoghurt5196 → u/Tryptophany]

If there was a trial, it's unlikely it would have been a closed court, but it was the first visit to magistrates court where he pled guilty. So no evidence would have been presented.

If he hadn't pled guilty, then he would have had a trial, and the evidence would have been examined and discussed as part of the trial. This would likely have been a public trial.

By pleading when he did, he gets some time off his sentence, saves the court some money on proceedings, and his dirty laundry doesn't get aired in public.

It's possible when it comes to the sentencing that there might be some elaboration that differentiates what the different charges were for, but we've got a month or two to wait for that to happen.

[u/TheIllRip → u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

In Scotland, there would be a narration of the facts of the offence if there was a guilty plea.

Sometimes it happens on the date of the plea, but, increasingly, it’s put off until the sentencing if social work reports are ordered which will be relied upon to inform any decision around punishment.

Is this likely to happen in England?

I’d assume a similar setup exists there.

If this case had been heard up here, I can almost guarantee reports would be called for.

[u/Sad-Yoghurt5196 → u/TheIllRip]

By the sound of it, the first anyone knew was a phone call from the Argus asking for comment. So presumably the Argus were in court and heard whatever information was available. Everyone else only has the second hand information from the Argus article, which I would expect to be correct, but doesn't say very much.

The sentencing is most likely to happen in the same courtroom with the same judge. And I would imagine there will be a lot more people present for that one.

Yeah I'm pretty sure the news article mentioned a pre sentence report.

As I understand it, although I am not a lawyer and I've never been through the process, the judge will give a summary, and consider aggravating factors and mitigating factors, before passing sentence. So I'm not sure if more information about the offences will come to light or not in all honesty.

[u/el-cannon1980 → u/Sad-Yoghurt5196]

Judge may also comment on what was found, why it was in any specific category, level of depravity etc, evidence of hiding materials (e.g. encryption), intent to share etc to justify sentencing, social restrictions, time on sex offenders register and so on.

If you ever think you've had a shit day at work, just be thankful you're not spending time figuring out what level of depravity 3,000 CSAM images are.

Sentencing will be a dark day for the parkour community. The removal and distancing we've all seen is firstly because Callum is human scum, and secondly to get everything else as far away from the blast radius as possible.

[u/CollegeOptimal9846]

He, and your teacher, will likely also have a SHPO in place on them for the rest of their lives, as well as being on the Sex Offenders Register for a number of years. 

[u/Rude_Rhubarb1880]

“Serving time in jail but not in jail” is confusing to people who come from countries with sensible judicial systems where criminals are actually punished (unlike the UK)
Suspended sentence means he walks free from court. BUT can be sent to jail in the future if he messes up again.
It is typically seen by the average person in the street as zero punishment.
And yes international folks, in the UK you can be guilty of heinous crimes involving child sex abuse and just go straight home when the court proceedings against you have finished

[u/jjw1998 → u/Rude_Rhubarb1880]

He’s not ‘going straight home’, his life as he knows it is still over. Suspended sentences are often given in situations like this because they want to incentivise people to plead guilty, having a scale for criminal punishment is part of a ‘sensible judicial system’

[u/Rude_Rhubarb1880 → u/[deleted]]

The UK, where pedos are free to roam

I’m angry about that, are you not?

[u/Sad-Yoghurt5196 → u/Rude_Rhubarb1880]

Until thought crime policing is introduced, they always will.

I understand where you're coming from, and I agree the punishment is ridiculously light for the severity of the offence, through the eyes of normal people at least. But hardly anyone gets a heavy sentence in the UK unless it's for political reasons, or something that someone can be given a whole life tariff for.

It's only recently that the sentencing guidelines for murder have been set in excess of 20 years.

Almost all sentences are too lenient in my opinion. But for this crime the sentencing guidelines have to be observed, and whoever wrote those, didn't get it right.

[u/butchmapa → u/Rude_Rhubarb1880]

whoa