The paedophile son of a prominent former Tory MP walked away from court today after a judge branded him a member of an online pervert club.
Nicholas Beaumont-Dark shared hundreds of child porn pictures and videos of children and babies – some aged just six months – on internet file-sharing networks with perverts around the world.
But a judge spared the stockbroker – son of Sir Anthony Beaumont-Dark – from an immediate jail term when he appeared at Warwick Crown Court today.
Instead, he was slapped with a 12 month prison sentence, suspended for two years, given a supervision order and fined £1,200.
Sentencing Beaumont-Dark, Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told him: “You are 50. You were, until you became enmeshed in this, a man of good character.
“You pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and you have had entrenched personal problems.
“None of that, however, diminishes your culpability in allowing yourself to join an internet club of perverts.
“They are infants, they have no one to protect them, they are completely vulnerable.
“You and others got sexual gratification from seeing it, which is frankly impossible for many of us to get our heads around at all.”
He was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years, attend a community sex offenders’ group work programme and observe a sexual offences prevention order for seven years.
Last month Beaumont-Dark, 50, admitted eight charges of making 393 indecent images of children by downloading them onto his computer.
The court heard police found abuse images of children and babies when they searched his computer after raiding his home in January last year.
Forensic investigators uncovered hundreds of photo and video files on the hard drive of the married dad-of-three’s computer, with over half rated at the most serious level 5 category.
He also admitted a further eight charges of distributing 388 images on peer-to-peer network Gigatribe, under the username ‘Daylight2007’, between January 1, 2011 and January 25, 2012.
Speaking through an intercom at his home in posh Tanworth-in-Arden, Warks., following his guilty pleas, Beaumont-Dark said he “deeply regretted” his actions and had sought psychiatric help.
Beaumont-Dark’s father, Sir Anthony, known affectionately as Tony, died at the age of 73 in April 2006.
He was as renowned as an outspoken former Conservative MP – who represented Birmingham’s Selly Oak constituency between 1979 and 1992 – and was described by former Conservative leader Michael Howard as a “champion of local government.”
