Weston-super-Mare man jailed for possessing more than half a million indecent pictures of children

A 65-year-old man from Weston-super-Mare has been jailed for more than three years after being caught with more than half a million indecent images of children.

Martin Schwarz’s home was searched after Avon and Somerset Police received intelligence that he was accessing such pictures.

Eleven phones and external hard drives containing a total of 542,904 indecent images were seized.

Schwarz pleaded guilty at Bristol Crown Court last year to three counts of making indecent images of children (categories A, B, and C), possession of extreme pornography, and possession of prohibited images.

He was sentenced at the same court on Friday 6 March.

Schwarz's total sentence came to three years and four months.

DC Katy Lewis, investigating, said: “Accessing or downloading indecent imagery of children is not a victimless crime; perpetrators often don’t stop to think about the lives of young children destroyed by the abuse that takes place behind it.

“These images depict the worst possible forms of child abuse and those perpetrators who access them create a market for further images to be produced.”