Paedophile who changed his name and moved to Tonbridge to avoid past is jailed for disgusting images

A convicted paedophile who changed his name and moved to Tonbridge to escape his past is facing more time behind bars after being caught with thousands of child porn pictures.

Police found 31,500 images of child sexual abuse on computers and storage devices when they raided Jonathan Jeffrey O'Hanlon's house in the town on May 14.

Of the pictures, 290 were so disgusting they were given a rating of Level 5 – the most serious. Around 4,500 of the pictures were categorised at Level 4.

Officers also uncovered documents revealing the 50-year-old had changed his name by deed poll from Jeffrey John Barry following a conviction for possessing indecent photographs and of gross indecency with a five-year-old girl in 1998. For those crimes, magistrates at Lewes sentenced him to nine months in prison.

A Kent Police spokeswoman told the Courier the force had no control over O'Hanlon after he had served his time on the sex offenders' register.

She said sex offenders do not automatically go on the register for life, but for a set period of time according to the severity of the offence.

She added: "Under the circumstances, there was nothing preventing O'Hanlon from changing his name and he wasn't required to report to a police station."

On Friday, O'Hanlon, who has moved to a new address in Tonbridge High Street since his arrest, appeared at Sevenoaks Magistrates' Court to face 12 new charges of making and possessing indecent photographs and asked for a further five offences to be taken into consideration.

Jenny Yale, prosecuting, said officers raided O'Hanlon's home after a specialist anti-paedophile unit tracked his activities online.

Mrs Yale said: "He told officers he had become more interested in indecent images while in prison. Upon his release he downloaded software he had learned about."

O'Hanlon put images in a folder labelled "kids", she said, and made them available for people to share online.

Mrs Yale requested O'Hanlon be made the subject of a sexual offences prevention order and forced to forfeit his computer equipment.

Chairman of the bench Adrian Atmore told O'Hanlon he did not have adequate powers to sentence him owing to the high number of images involved and their severity.

O'Hanlon was bailed to await sentencing at crown court on the condition he does not visit a particular address in Tonbridge, does not come into contact with juveniles, does not live at any address where under-16s also reside and does not use computers or other internet devices other than at his place of work or in a library.

A date for sentencing has yet to be decided.