A FORMER Crown Court judge admitted yesterday that he had downloaded dozens of pornographic images of children on his home computer.
Major-General David Selwood, QC, who was the Army’s director of legal services before he became resident judge at Portsmouth Crown Court, pleaded guilty before Bow Street Magistrates’ Court to 13 offences of making or possessing indecent images of children.
He was placed on the sex offenders register and will be sentenced next month. The judge, 69, married with four children and six grandchildren, retired this month days before he was charged. He was paid a £74,000 lump sum on retirement and will get a pension of £33,000 per year.
The court was told that the charges against Selwood, from Winchester, Hampshire, involved 75 indecent images.
“I intend to plead guilty to all of those charges,” he said.
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Amanda Sawertz, for the prosecution, said that the images included pictures of young boys and had been obtained from a number of websites. “Some were thumbnail images but some had been enlarged,” Miss Sawertz said.
The court was told that Selwood had made a statement to police in which he maintained he had never had any sexual interest in young children.
Miss Sawertz said: “He gave as the reason for visiting such sites curiosity to see how easy or difficult it was for someone with limited computer skills such as himself to find such images on the internet.”
But, in the statement, Selwood admitted that it would be difficult to describe his actions as “research”.
He was quoted as saying: “I can see objectively now how foolish this may appear, but there must be things going on in the subconscious mind which I need to look at.”
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All the photographs were described as being level one images; the least serious category.
Richard Hallam, for the defence, said that Selwood had retired from a job he loved because of the case.
“He has lost his judicial career, he has lost his reputation and he has suffered — and will suffer — considerable financial loss as a result of this case,” Mr Hallam said. “He was a man who loved his work and would have loved to carry on.”
Anthony Donne, QC, a fellow judge and friend of Selwood, described the effect on the former judge and his family as “absolutely catastrophic — totally devastating and humiliating”.
Granting bail, District Judge Timothy Workman told Selwood: “I have no intention of committing this case to the Crown Court.” In April, Selwood controversially ruled that a leading academic charged with possessing child pornography had not downloaded the images for self-gratification.