Terence Standage secretly accessed thousands of indecent images and videos
A registered sex offender from Maidstone who used a neighbour’s Wi-Fi signal to download illegal images of children has been jailed.
Terence Standage secretly accessed thousands of indecent images and videos during a period stretching more than six years.
Police investigating suspicious internet activity initially attended an address in Maidstone on 16 January 2019. The occupier revealed Standage had been known to piggyback onto their Wi-Fi, prompting officers to then visit his property where they executed a search warrant.
Standage, aged 61, was arrested and various devices, including a memory stick and hard drive were seized for forensic examination. This led to the recovery of almost 12,000 illegal images and videos, of which more than 300 were classed in the most serious category.
Further offences were identified including evidence of upskirting offences involving a number of unknown females on a train and a bus.
Standage was charged with four counts of making indecent images of a child and three counts of outraging public decency. He was also recalled to prison having breached licence terms imposed from previous sex offences.
He pleaded guilty at Maidstone Crown Court and on Wednesday 5 May 2021 was sentenced to two years and four months’ imprisonment. He was also made subject to the terms of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
DS Dave Shipley, of the Paedophile Online Investigation Team, said: ‘Standage has a lengthy history of offending and despite previous convictions has made sustained and extensive efforts to obtain and view abhorrent material on the internet involving the sexual abuse of children.
‘His calculated use of someone else’s Wi-Fi has demonstrated his determination to access illegal images undetected. Make no mistake, the material Standage deliberately sought and downloaded will have resulted from real children suffering appalling abuse. People like him have little understanding of the gravity of their actions, and must face the consequences.’
DS Dave Shipley