Indecent Images of Children – Case Dropped

Case study summary

Our client was a 15-year-old who had been encouraged by others to send indecent images of himself and others. We convinced the police that it was not in the public interest for this case to go ahead, and they agreed to drop the case

Case study

A 15-year-old student approached us with the support of his family. They were shocked when, one morning, the police attended his address and seized all of his electronic devices. The police said that there had been an alert, sent to them by the internet service provider, that indecent images of children had been sent from the family's IP address and linked to the account of our client.

Our client had been encouraged by others to send videos online. Whilst it is not uncommon for teenagers to engage in this behaviour, it remains illegal for teenagers to send videos/images of under 18’s between themselves. However, there is an argument in these cases that it is not in the public interest for teenagers to be charged. The purpose of this legislation was to stop older people with sexual interests in children from sending indecent material, not to punish teenagers who are engaging in relationships with people their own age. It is not guaranteed that cases of this nature will be dropped and it is important that these cases are handled very carefully and proactively from the start.

Our client and his family were understandably very worried about the investigation as a conviction for an offence of this nature could be devastating for our client’s future. Therefore, they instructed our specialist sexual offences lawyers to represent him.

The police asked our client to attend a first interview; at this first interview, the police had not yet downloaded the devices to see if there was any evidence that our client had been involved in these offences. The starting point is always that it is for the police to prove the allegation against the client and, until the police had any evidence, we did not have anything to gain by commenting.

Normally, it can take police forensics teams over twelve months to download these devices. We convinced the police that this was an exceptional case, and they expeditated the examination of the device.

After the devices had been examined, the police confirmed that they had only found borderline material that it would not be unusual for a teenager to possess. We convinced the police that it was not in anyone’s interest for our client to be charged over this and they agreed to drop the case.

Our client and his family were very grateful that the case was dropped, and our client can return to focus on his education and upcoming GCSEs.