Great Harwood man admits downloading child porn

5:31pm Monday 29th September 2008

A MAN secretly filmed a naked toddler playing in a Rishton street and a 12-year-old girl doing a handstand.

Donald Chattwood, 54, of Prospect Street, Great Harwood, also downloaded child porn.

But sentencing was adjourned after Chattword denied he had carried out the crimes for sexual kicks.

His defence team told Burnley Crown Court that Chattwood had ‘a very serious functional impairment’ caused by a brain haemorrhage that has prompted a personality change.

And he pleaded guilty on that basis.

However the Crown Prosecution Service disputed this. Its solicitors believe that Chattwood was gaining sexual gratification.

Prosecutor Louise Whaites told the hearing : “There is a voice over from the video he took of the children playing in the street which the crown says supports that.

“There was footage taken in the house of the defendant committing a sex act over pictures of young females.”

Judge Beverley Lunt adjourned the case until November for assessment of the psychiatric evidence and possibly to hear from the defendant.

Judge Lunt said the court would want to know why the defendant did it if not for gratification. The Probation Service would have to explore that in their assessment of any risk the defendant posed, she said.

Chattwood yesterday admitted two counts of taking an indecent photo of a child between January 2006 and June 2007.

He also pleaded guilty to a series of charges in relation to possessing or making indecents photos of children. The majority were level one, but some were in the level five, the most serious category.

Chattwood, who was ordered to sign the sex offenders register, was bailed on condition he lives at his given address, does not have any contact with anybody under 18 and does not possess a camera.