A paedophile has been put where he belongs after documenting his sickening desires in a “horrific” diary.
In the secret journal, discovered by police, Gerrard Charnley boasted about being “proud to be a paedophile” and it was found alongside a list of children whom he wanted to rape. The 52-year-old also scoured the dark web to gather hundreds of thousands of indecent images, having developed a “compulsive obsession” with such illicit materials.
His vile stash of child abuse imagery was so huge that officers couldn’t even tally the full extent of files he had downloaded. Liverpool Crown Court was told on Thursday (January 2) that police visited his home in Widnes on February 27 last year, confiscating a total of 12 electronic devices.
Upon examination, these devices revealed numerous documents authored by Charnley. Prosecutor Sarah Holt detailed how one document, chillingly titled “My Paedophile Diary”, included entries with specific dates outlining Charnley’s intentions towards certain children.
A June 2016 entry disturbingly stated: “I want to rape [girl’s name] some day very soon. I’m proud to say this as a paedophile.” The diary further contained a list of Charnley’s preferred websites for accessing illegal images and a section labelled “preteen slags I’d love to rape”.
Additional Word and PDF files created by him bore titles such as “Paedo Thoughts 2019”, reports the ECHO. In the case against him, evidence was produced showing that the defendant had used his laptop to access the dark web and had bookmarked sites with disturbing names such as “paedo links”, “paedo bum collection”, “naughty kids” and “little girls”.
Video playback history from the VLC Media Player app on his Samsung Galaxy tablet indicated he had viewed videos with titles suggesting child abuse content. Additionally, he was found to have visited Reddit forums centred around “schoolgirl skirts” and “schoolgirl sluts”.
Meanwhile, analysis revealed he downloaded so-called “paedophile manuals”, documents like “The Paedophile’s Handbook” and “How to Practice Child Love”, which purportedly offer advice on perpetrating child abuse. Charnley was also discovered to have a massive stash of illegal images and videos: 15,081 pictures and 2,308 videos categorized as category A, depicting the most severe form of abuse, these included images of babies being raped; 17,383 images classified as category B; 169,968 category C images; and additional computer-generated illicit images and extreme pornographic materials featuring children.
Police did not categorize more than 230,000 further images due to the overwhelming quantity of material on his devices. Under interview, Charnley claimed that he “remembered downloading documents such as a paedophile manual, but thought he had deleted it without reading it”.
He also confessed his sexual attraction to children had “progressed through the years”, though he maintained it was a “fantasy in his head” that he “would never act out on”.
Myles Wilson, defending, informed the court his client sought help from Stop It Now, a charity aimed at preventing child sexual abuse, after he was detained, and highlighted Charnley’s “poor physical and mental health”. Wilson added: “He gives help to his elderly father, who has mobility issues and rarely leaves the house. The defendant does his father’s shopping.
“Clearly he had become obsessed with this type of material, almost a compulsion. He was open with the police in acknowledging that he has issues and that he finds children attractive. He does not want to be in this position in the future. He was relieved, he tells me, when he was arrested, because he realised that this chapter of his life was coming to an end.”
Charnley pled guilty to possession of indecent images of children, three counts of making indecent images, possession of prohibited images of children, possession of extreme pornographic images and possession of a paedophile manual. Dressed in a grey suit and glasses in the dock, he received a jail sentence of 14 months.
Subscribe to our new weekly newsletter THE COURT FILES and get all the biggest stories from Lancashire’s courts direct to your inbox