A FORMER General Election candidate has been caught with over 200 indecent images of children.
Benjamin Sherman, 37, who works as a deputy car parks supervisor for Chelmsford City Council, pleaded guilty to possessing still images and movies of child pornography.
But at Chelmsford Crown Court last week, the father-of-two, who stood for the Reduce Tax on Beer Party in Chelmsford in 2010, was spared jail and instead ordered to attend an internet sex offenders' treatment programme and be added to the sex offenders' register for five years.
Judge Charles Gratwicke said: "Nobody who views that material can feel anything other than revulsion and sickness – seeing those young girls forced to behave in the way that they did.
"It wasn't you who forced them to, but if there weren't people like you interested, those who ply their trade of finding children and exploiting them would cease to do so."
But the judge did not jail Sherman, because of his guilty plea and previous good character.
Sherman came last in Chelmsford's 2010 general election with his party that wanted to fight the Government's tax on alcohol.
The court heard that Sherman, formerly of Hillside Grove, Chelmsford, now living in Suffolk, had downloaded 51 images and 189 movies in five-years.
Richard Stevens, prosecuting, said when police carried out the raid at his Chelmsford home last year, they arrived shortly before the car park worker got home and he said: "I've downloaded things which are probably illegal".
Mr Stevens added: "Over five years, the defendant had been viewing pornography at his home and it was found in the tower hard drive in the dining room."
When interviewed after his arrest, Sherman said he had been viewing such material for five or six years and was interested in girls aged 13 to 17, but accepted that some were as young as four or five-years-old.
Evelyn Hicks, mitigating, said: "Curiosity got the better of him but he's not placed any special passwords or storage on files and anyone could have found them very easily.
"He's now re-educated about children in images being subject to abuse and wants to further educate himself by undertaking the course. His relationship with his wife is over – they have two children aged four and two."
He was also given a four-month jail sentence, suspended for two years.
A spokesman from Chelmsford City Council said: "These are appalling offences and as soon as the council became aware, Mr Sherman was suspended from service, pending a thorough disciplinary investigation."
