Ex-Vicar Jailed Over Child Porn Stash

Last Edited: Wednesday, 20 Dec 2006, 8:00 AM CST
Created: Tuesday, 19 Dec 2006, 6:00 PM CST
12/20/2006 --

A former vicar has been jailed for four years over his role in amassing a huge "Aladdin's Cave" of child pornography.

Millionaire Michael Studdert was convicted along with paedophile rights campaigner Thomas O'Carroll, who received a two-and-a-half-year prison term.

The illicit library of magazines, videos, photographs and slides contained nearly 50,000 images and took half a century to collect.

The stash was stored in a secret vault behind a bathroom wall at Studdert's then mansion on a 17-acre country estate at Hindhead, Surrey.

It was one of the largest child porn collections of its kind, London's Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court heard.

Children - predominantly boys and as young as six - had been filmed and photographed being raped and tortured.

Studdert admitted 20 sample counts of making indecent images of children between January 2001 and the beginning of this year.

The 67-year-old, who was formerly an Anglican minister and school chaplain, also confessed to distributing and possessing illegal pictures.

O'Carroll, 61, an ex-teacher-turned-journalist, pleaded guilty to distributing child porn images between January, 1994 and July, 2005.

The Irishman, of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, is a founder member of the now defunct Paedophile Information Exchange.

He also helped run both the organisation's successor, the International Paedophile Child Emancipation Group, and a subsidiary, Gentlemen Without an Interesting Name.

The groups championed the legislation of sex between adults and children.

The stash was discovered when undercover police infiltrated one of the organisations.