Roll On Friday
A paedophile who worked at Gateley has been jailed.
Gavin Hough was a member of the listed law firm’s IT team when he was arrested in 2024.
Police raided Hough’s family home in Nottingham after an internet address linked to him was found to have downloaded images of child sexual abuse and people having sex with animals (the two seem to go hand in hand).
A search of Hough’s mobile phone and a PC tower yielded more than 3,000 images and videos of child sex abuse and bestiality, with 180 falling into category A, the most serious band.
Under police questioning Hough initially answered “no comment”, but he later pleaded guilty to three counts of possession of indecent images of children, one of prohibited images and one of possession of extreme pornography.
Jailing him for 14 months, Judge Steven Coupland said during sentencing at Nottingham Crown Court last week that despite Hough’s insistence that he did not get sexual gratification from viewing the images, “I am of the opinion that you do have a sexual interest in children”.
“If the desire was not there, there would be no such images.”
The judge said Hough’s material was “particularly appalling involving children as young as six”, and that contacting other people online to accrue the images “demonstrated a determined, sustained and sophisticated effort by you to obtain them”.
Hough’s defence argued that he only gravitated towards the depraved material after “experiencing reduced intimacy” with his wife. It’s reduced even more now, as the court heard she has left him and kicked him out of their house.
The judge said it was “additionally concerning” that Hough had been assessed as having a medium-to-high risk of committing further similar offences.
In a statement, Gateley told RollOnFriday it sacked Hough after learning of the charges: “We became aware of Gavin Hough’s arrest in December 2024. He was immediately suspended and his employment terminated with Gateley the same month”.
https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/exclusive-gateley-it-worker-sacked-and-jailed-abuse-images
