David Shaw, a 48-year-old former GP and paediatrician from Taunton, Somerset has been sentenced to 2 years and 2 months in prison for possessing over 1.2 million indecent images of children in categories A-C.
He had used anonymisation techniques on a peer-to-peer sharing network Freenet to download these images, but was traced by investigators from the National Crime Agency (NCA).
Shaw was arrested by NCA officers in February 2019 at his former home in Maidstone, Kent.
His devices were seized and found to contain the large collection of indecent images, one of the largest hauls of child sexual abuse images the NCA has seen.
Shaw was charged with three counts of making and possessing indecent images of children, to which he pleaded guilty at Maidstone Crown Court on October 18 last year.
His devices contained indecent images of children in categories A-C, with category A being the most severe.
Shaw admitted to downloading indecent images of children since 2005, and being sexually attracted to pre-pubescent girls.
During the hearing, His Honour Judge Saxby commented that Shaw, being a specialist in paediatrics, was more aware than others of the harm inflicted on the children in the images he downloaded.
Shaw was also handed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.
NCA Senior Investigator Tony Smith commented that Shaw’s collection of images was shocking, and that he had abused his position of trust and helped fuel the trade in child sexual abuse images.
Smith further added that the NCA would continue to pursue offenders like Shaw, to make them accountable for their actions and to protect victims of online child sexual abuse.
