Set of six comical country sheep coasters by Claughton Images
Price:£11.70
Bookshop owner jailed over indecent images
Jun 23, 2008
A BARNARD Castle bookshop owner has been jailed for possessing and distributing thousands of images of child abuse.Phillip John George Webb, who ran All Things Books, in The Bank, possessed 36,265 indecent images of children. Almost 1,000 were of the most serious level.
Durham Crown Court was told he shared fantasies about abusing children with other paedophiles on internet chatrooms.
He was found guilty of 17 charges of possessing and distributing indecent images and films.
Webb, who is married and has a grown up family, was jailed for three years and three months on Friday.
Judge Richard Lowden said: "In distributing these images to other people who you don't know, you engaged in the most terrifying fantasies… for the purposes of sexual gratification."
Police raided Webb’s home late last year after they received information from a force in another area of the UK - thought to be Kent.
The former home of the defendant, in Richmond, and his bookshop were searched.
When police visited the shop, Webb gave officers a pile of disks, saying: “This is what you are looking for.”
According to the prosecution, most of the images were of children under ten.
More than 11,000 of them featured sexual activity between children and adults.
The court was told Webb had worked with children for more than 30 years, as an activities co-ordinator with remand centres and the Cub Scouts. It is not thought that he worked with children in the Barnard Castle area.
The judge said Webb could have encouraged others, whom he did not know, to act upon these fantasies, by sharing them.
Webb, who is married with grown-up children, was banned from working with young people again. He was placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for life and banned from using the internet, other than for work.
All Things Books has been closed.