A FORMER West Yorkshire Police detective has been sentenced for downloading child pornography.
Michael Vause claimed that “curiosity” led to him downloading vile images of children as young as four, when he appeared before Kirklees Magistrates’ Court in Huddersfield.
He was slammed by District Judge Marie Mallon, who told him that the children in the 563 pictures were being abused in the gravest possible way.
Vause, who worked for the force’s professional standards department, admitted 10 counts of making indecent images, at a previous hearing in the Huddersfield court.
Yesterday he was sentenced to a high level community order for three years and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders' Register for five years
Judge Mallon also ordered the destruction of Vause’s images and his computer.
The photographs were downloaded on or before May 12 this year at the 59-year-old’s home address in Wentbridge Lane, Pontefract.
The young girls involved in the images on the computer seized by police were aged between four and 12.
The photographs included 562 considered level one, which is the lowest of five counts legally designated to cover indecent images of children.
Level one typically involves images of children without sexual activity.
One of the images was the more serious level three, which involves sexual activity between adults and children.
