Former city priest jailed for downloading child porn
Former city priest John Shannon, has been jailed for eight months for downloading 740 indecent photographs of children as young as nine.
Father Shannon (58), of The Elms, Chatteris, was sentenced after admitting 16 counts of making indecent images of children and one charge of possessing indecent images of children at Durham Crown Court on Friday (14 January).
The Catholic priest, who has served at St Peter and All Souls Church and Sacred Heart and St Oswalds Church in Peterborough, was working as a part-time lecturer at Ushaw College, the 200-year-old seminary at Esh, near Durham City when the offences took place.
He retired from ministry in Chatteris after his arrest on June 16 and has since resigned from the Diocese of East Anglia.
The court heard how police were called in by the college authorities last June when they discovered that someone had made a considerable number of attempts to access restricted websites through the college’s new computer system.
Jane Mitford, prosecuting, said that after the culprit was identified as Shannon officers went to his home and seized his computer. Their analysis revealed that it contained 740 indecent images of children.
There were 521 pictures categorised as being of Level 1 seriousness, the
lowest rating, 133 at Level 2, eight at Level 3, 75 at level 4 and three at Level 5, the strongest rating.
Miss Mitford said: “The ages of the children in these images ranged between nine and 15 and in the main they were young boys.”
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