A 70 year-old man in England has was arrested and charged for possession of child pornography. Married for 40 years and retired, he had never been in trouble with the law. He was also tech savvy for his age, regularly using his computer to surf the web and keeping in touch with his family.

One day his laptop wasn’t working well so he took it into a repair shop. The repairman spotted some images of naked children, so called the police to investigate. The elderly man was called in and arrested, his laptop confiscated as evidence.

“You’ve got child porn on your laptop” and he kept saying “no, I haven’t!”. “You’ve got pictures of naked children, posing provocatively with each other” “no, I haven’t, I don’t know what you are talking about”.

He was charged with possession of Level 1 Child Pornography, which is the lowest level, that doesn’t involve sexual acts but must have provocative and sexual poses. Due to his non-existent criminal record, he was bailed on the condition that he can no longer be alone with any children, which was complicated since he has grandchildren.

What convoluted things further was that the police refused to cooperate with the man’s lawyer, providing only descriptions of the photos as evidence, which were written with a sinister undertone. The day of the trial, the prosecutor asked if the man pleaded guilty, but the lawyer demanded to see the photos first, which hadn’t been seen by either side.

Eventually the police produced the pictures and the two barristers went off to have a look at them. Until this point the CPS barrister hadn’t seen them either. The two barristers looked at each other. They didn’t need to say a word.

The photos were described once again in court, this time as it were without the sinister undertones. Simply put, they were pictures of children playing on a hot summer’s day with water guns, hoses, buckets, and kiddie pools.

The children are all naked. He asked [the elderly man] if he knew anything about them. “Oh yes” he replied “they are my grandchildren!”. The police written description was so far away from reality that [the defendant] had not been able to recognise his own photos.

It turned out that the grandchildren visited their grandparents during the summer, and since they had not planned on playing with water that day, didn’t pack their swimsuits. Case closed, grandpa went home a free man.

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