A pedophile in Berkshire, England, was sentenced for downloading more than 400 pictures and videos of child abuse from a site on the dark web. Law enforcement learned that the man had been viewing illegal content while on probation for previous child sexual abuse crimes.
In 2015, a judge in Berkshire, England, sentenced Ben Keeler to several years on an extended sentence for sexually abusing a minor and possessing pictures of sexual child abuse. The sentence required Keeler to live at an Approved Premises (also known as a bail hostel). Approved Premises are the equivalent of halfway houses for offenders to live at before reintegrating with society. They also house some criminals on license. At the Approved Premises, offenders were not permitted to have or use cell phones. Keeler had either purchased a cellphone from someone else who had smuggled a phone into the Approved Premises or he had smuggled a phone into the Approved Premises by himself. As a result, the staff at the Approved Premises would seize the phone regardless of the phone’s content.
Two years after his original sentence, staff at the Approved Premises learned that Keeler had his own smartphone that he had been using in secret. Keeler knew that staff had learned of his phone yet made no attempt to clean the phone’s contents. The Approved Premises staff seized the phone and examined its contents. After a brief search of the phone, the staff notified the police of the phone’s “quite horrific” content. In addition to more than 400 pictures and videos of children less than one year old, Keeler had downloaded a video of a man raping a cow and a similar video of a man sexually violating a snake. In court, law enforcement officers attempted to explain the content of the videos to the judge and to the prosecution. The court seemingly had difficulty comprehending the video of the man somehow violating the snake. “This moving file shows a male adult with a cow performing [a sex act] on the adult,” Amanda Hamilton, the prosecutor, told the court.
The court heard how Keeler had downloaded these videos from a site on the dark web and through a WhatsApp group used by other pedophiles for sharing links to illegal content. Many of the links shared via WhatsApp pointed to files on clearnet hosting sites. As a result, when Keeler tapped a link, the link opened via his standard web browser, such as Chrome or Safari, instead of a mobile version of the Tor Browser Bundle. Law enforcement told the court that Keeler had never cleared his browser history. Although Keeler made no attempt to erase the evidence of illegal activity on his phone, he had poorly hidden a USB drive inside a box of powdered soap. The police found the drive and later learned that Keeler had used the drive to store additional videos of adults raping young children.
His Honour Judge Paul Dugdale agreed with Rebecca Austin, Keeler’s council – the 30-year-old pedophile lacked the sophistication to download and store child abuse content in a way that avoided detection. Even though he had accessed the dark web for some of the content found on the phone, his use of the dark web was most likely driven by the urge to download something accessible only through Tor. The anonymity Tor provided was insignificant to Keeler. Keeler, according to his council, had already attempted to end his own life by jumping off a bridge. A passing police officer intervened and prevented Keeler from jumping. The defense attorney explained that Keeler had nothing to lose in life and, as a result, hardly cared about the consequences that came with downloading and viewing child abuse content.
“The only medication available to him has devastating physical side effects. He had been taking medication to suppress his sexual libido, but it led to him developing female physical characteristics,” Rebecca Austin said. “He feels that he’s a young man with no future at all. There is no sophistication to Mr. Keeler.”
The judge acknowledged that Keeler had serious mental health issues. However, he said, “Anyone who has a movie of a three month old baby is in possession of something quite horrific and I am afraid that has to be marked with an appropriate sentence.” The appropriate sentence, the judge decided, was eight months in prison followed by the remainder of his earlier sentence at the Approved Premises.
by: C. Aliens