A judge slammed a paedophile’s attempts to curry favour in court as he sentenced him to more than six years behind bars for disgusting crimes that he committed in the 1990s
A judge was left unimpressed by what a paedophile wore to court as he sent him back to jail. Historic offences committed by grim Kenneth McNabb saw him slapped with six-and-a-half years behind bars, and he remains subject to lifelong notification requirements.
The eagle-eyed judge was less than impressed with McNabb wearing not one, but two poppies on his suit – suggesting the defendant was trying to curry favour with his appearance. “I am tempted to ask why the defendant is wearing poppies on his jacket,” Judge David Swinnerton said. “It does not impress, if that is what it is meant to do. He is entitled to.”
McNabb, 74, admitted two counts of indecent assault, possession of indecent images of children, three counts of making indecent images, possession of prohibited images of a child, possession of an extreme pornographic image and breaching a sexual offences prevention order.
He is said to have been “angered” by measures designed to prevent him reoffending, which he views as an “infringement on his freedom”, the Liverpool Echo reports.
At Liverpool Crown Court today, a victim told McNabb he “put him through hell and didn’t have the balls to admit what he did”. The victim was in his early teens when he was sexually assaulted by McNabb on two occasions during the 1990s, the court heard.
The offences committed in the Skelmersdale area of Lancashire saw McNabb place the victim’s hand onto his own penis before instructing the boy to carry out a sex act on him. He then told the victim he was “teaching him how to do it so he could do it himself”, according to Christopher Taylor, prosecuting.
He made a similar comment on a second occasion as he performed an identical sex act. He left the victim “feeling sick” but they did not speak about the abuse to “anyone”.
In a statement read out to the court on his behalf, he labelled McNabb a “monster” and added: “I considered taking my own life. I’m a lot better now, but I still have nightmares. I also suffer sleepless nights.
“As a man, I bottled things up. I found it difficult to speak about what happened. This man put me through hell and didn’t have the balls to admit to the police what he’d done. I thought the result would have made me happy, but, in reality, it has made me numb.”
Paul Becker, defending, told the court: “Alcohol has been a factor in all of his previous offending. Mr McNabb is keen to do whatever he can to stop offending in the future. The defendant has social accommodation, and he is concerned about the risk of that being lost should he be imprisoned today.
“He completed his education without being able to read or write. He was diagnosed with dyslexia when he joined the army, aged 17. He was last employed in 2006 and has been in poor health ever since. In 2004, he was the victim of an armed robbery. He suffers from post traumatic stress disorder as a result of that.
“The last thing he wants to do today is to go to prison. It may not benefit society, but, if it has to be prison, I ask your honour to pass the shortest sentence possible.”
The judge said McNabb’s claims he wishes to change “rang hollow” due to him spurning “opportunity after opportunity” to do so.
Sentencing, Judge David Swinnerton said: “This was a long time ago, but, as is often the case, your victim felt unable to tell anyone about it and tried to bury what happened deep in his mind. That happens quite frequently. Living with that becomes difficult.
“I also have to sentence you for more recent offences. You just simply want to carry on looking at indecent imagery of children. You indicated in your pre-sentence report that you wanted to see the images to verify them and that being on a sexual offences prevention order made you angry, seeing it as some sort of infringement on your freedom.
“Every child in those images was being sexually assaulted or raped, and pictures and videos of them are being shared around for the sexual gratification of people like you. Paedophiles, to put it briefly. You create that market. Here you are facing a further sentence for exactly the same, breaching your order, looking at indecent images of children and historic contact offences, actually abusing a child.
“I am told that you are keen to do whatever you can to avoid offending, but that rings fairly hollow when I look at your antecedent history. You have had opportunity after opportunity to try to change your ways, and you have not. I do take into account your ill health.
“You could have, back in 1999, cleaned the slate by owning up to what you had done, but you did not. You continued to keep that secret, hoping, no doubt, that he would continue to keep it secret too.”
McNabb was previously locked up for five years in 1999 for sexually assaulting two girls. He has since been convicted of offences relating to indecent images of children in 2011, 2014 and 2021, in spite of being subject to lifelong sexual offences protection order.
And when police visited him last year, the pensioner was found to have downloaded a further five category A indecent images. These are images showing the most serious forms of abuse.
Further images were found in categories B and C. McNabb, who also collected six prohibited computer generated images depicting child abuse and one extreme pornographic image involving a horse, had meanwhile installed virtual private network software on the device in an apparent attempt to disguise his online activities.
