Supermarket boss sent WhatsApp sexual images of children

Nadeem Ashraf, 55, runs three local stores and employs 30 staff, York Crown Court heard.

When police forensic investigators examined his iPhone they discovered he had received sexual images of children as young as two or three years old and distributed sexual images of children as young as four or five.

One of the images showed a child aged six to eight in distress.

His barrister Rhianydd Clement said: “He doesn’t have a sexual interest in children.”

Ashraf had not deliberately sought out indecent images of children on the internet and had not liked what he received.

He had exchanged thousands of messages with the other WhatsApp users involved and only a very small number had included the illegal images as attachments.

“He is utterly remorseful and he also recognises the shame he has brought on his family,” Ms Clement said.

Ashraf, of Moor Lane, Acomb, pleaded guilty to three charges of distributing indecent images of children, three of making indecent images of children by receiving them over the internet and one of possessing extreme pornography. 

He admitted distributing in total one video of the most serious category, four videos of the middle category and one picture of the least serious category. He admitted having 18 sexual videos and pictures in total including six videos and two pictures of the most serious category.

He pleaded guilty on the basis that he had been sent the illegal videos and pictures by a friend in 2021, he had been worried by what he had received and thereafter desisted.

Judge Simon Hickey said: “This is not a normal case of making and distributing (images of children).”

Normally such cases involved much larger number of images and searches of the internet.

Ashraf was willing to work with probation to rehabilitate himself and had not reoffended since his arrest three years ago.

Sending him to jail would have repercussions for his 30 employees and his family.

The judge passed a 20-month prison sentence and suspended it for 18 months on condition Ashraf does 20 days’ rehabilitative activities and 100 hours’ unpaid work. Ashraf will be on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.

The judge declined a prosecution request that Ashraf be made subject to a sexual harm prevention order curbing his use of the internet, saying there was no need, given the lack of offending since 2021 and the controls that Ashraf would be under through the sex offenders’ register.

Mr Foy said Ashraf had had lengthy WhatsApp exchanges with four people which had lasted for years and continued up to within days of his arrest

Most of the thousands of messages exchanged had included attachments. One had started in 2006 and included more than 3,500 messages with 1,600 attachments.

Ashraf had sent illegal images of children to one of the four and had received illegal images from two more and an image of bestiality from the fourth.

He had asked for one of the illegal videos sent to him to be resent as the original sending hadn’t arrived.