Priest Escapes Jail after Police Raid His Church and Find More Than 3,000 Images of Children
By Gareth Davies
A PRIEST has escaped jail after his church was raided and more than 3,000 indecent images of children were found. Paul Clarke, 71, a Roman Catholic priest, admitted a number of offences relating to indecent images of children. One concerned his possession of an indecent image of a child, another concerned his possession of prohibited images, and three concerned his making a total of 3,100 indecent images of children. Officers had executed a search warrant at Clarke's Rye address, the residential presbytery attached to St Anthony's Church, onNovember 13, 2014, and seized computers and related material. All the offences involved images taken from the Internet. There is no evidence of contact offending and none of the images are of local children. Clarke, now of Urmston, Manchester, but formerly of Watchbell Road, Rye, was given an eight month prison sentence suspended for two years at Lewes Crown Court today. He will be a registered sex offender for ten years and was given a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) to last indefinitely, severely restricting his access to computers. The prosecution followed an intelligence-led investigation by the Paedophile On-Line Investigation Team (POLIT) of Sussex Police.
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