Last updated at 09:25 21 June 2007

Bill Henkel and his wife Sharon sit close together on a sofa in their bright, immaculate detached home in a quiet corner of eastern England.

They are active members of their local church. They sing in old age homes and Henkel, 47, likes to help the elderly of the parish with D.I.Y. jobs.

On the surface, there is nothing remarkable about the couple. The same could be said of their home.

Observant visitors, however, might note the absence of any computers - a clue to the fact that this is no ordinary marriage.

In June 2003, Henkel was caught downloading

child pornography at work. He was prosecuted, sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment in March last year and released at the halfway point in October.

In the wake of the smashing of Britain's largest internet paedophile ring, reported in yesterday's Mail, Bill's account of his desires and his battle to control them makes compelling reading. It offers a chilling insight into the mind of a paedophile.

This week a court heard how 700 paedophiles had accessed a website - set up by 28-year-old brewery worker Timothy Cox, from Suffolk - containing 11,000 images, including more than 1,000 videos of children being abused.

While Cox was given an "indeterminate sentence", Bill Henkel admits that, in his case, getting caught was the best thing that could have happened to him.

Henkel, 48, once a high-flying IT expert, had known throughout his adult life that his sexuality was warped.

His wife of 17 years, 40-year-old Sharon, had also known - after they experienced sexual problems - that her husband was sexually attracted to young girls.

But she never thought he would offend because she had accompanied him on visits to doctors, psychologists and therapists.

Numerous counsellors helped them resolve some difficulties, but each concluded they could not overcome Henkel's paedophile tendencies.

His GP told him that the only effective treatment and therapy near where he lived was for convicted offenders.

Many will question why Sharon, a former clerical worker, was prepared to remain with her husband. She has had to deal with agonising moral issues.

Would she have had any concerns, for example, if they'd had daughters of their own? How would she have felt if he had assaulted a young girl?

Yet Sharon believes that Henkel is a decent man, which is why she worked so hard to help him cope with his urges. Even so, having trusted that he wouldn't jeopardise their marriage, his conviction was a mighty blow.

Sharon says: "Of course I was hurt and angry. We'd tried to deal with the problem together for years. I'd given him all the support I could muster.

"My comfort was that in every other way he was a good man and a good husband. I thought he'd keep fighting his urges. I never feared he'd become an offender. That trust was shattered.

"I was sickened when I learned what he had been doing. I could have walked away then and left him to it, but within hours of him being found out, I could see his remorse was genuine.

"I was disgusted, but it wasn't anything like the revulsion he felt for himself. His determination to seek help was stronger than ever.

"In the end, it wasn't such a hard decision for me to stick around and help him. I'd been in that role for years."

Sharon's faith in Bill and her ability to empathise might be rooted in common experience. Both were victims of serious sexual abuse as children.

Both their abusers were convicted and jailed, and both died while serving their sentences.

Henkel, however, refuses to hook his long-standing problems on to that aspect of his childhood.

More significant, he believes, was his infatuation as a boy with a friend's younger sister. He says: "I was about 12 and she was about ten when we met.

"It wasn't just the way she looked. She was a lovely little girl, always the first to go to a younger kid in the street and help them if they'd fallen or were crying.

"Everyone loved her. I never got over the immense attraction I felt for her. I grew up and she grew up and we lost touch.

"But in my fantasies, she remained that sweet ten-year-old girl, and gradually images of other girls of that age replaced her in my fantasies.'

Henkel seems comfortable discussing the matter with Sharon at his side. She was initially reluctant about his decision to speak publicly about a subject that most people would want to bury, but Henkel persuaded her otherwise, thereby providing a telling insight into the opportunities afforded to men like him by the computer age.

He says: "I feel it's almost part of my rehabilitation to say publicly that I'm sorry, that I'm doing all I can to stop myself reoffending and, by the way, here are some measures that could be taken to stop others."

Henkel was an expert at an IT firm where he was responsible for advising on computer safety and preventing internet abuse.

After he started to view pornography on his computer, he made recommendations to the firm that would have prevented him from continuing to do so, but they were deemed unnecessary.

His viewing grew into an addiction. Bill

refused to have a computer at home so that he wouldn't be tempted to look at banned images.

He knew he was doing wrong, but couldn't stop. He had to wait until he was in jail to get the support he needed.

"Getting caught and going to jail saved my life," Henkel says.

He is not exaggerating. Before his capture, he had recognised the downward spiral in which he was caught and had attempted suicide by overdosing three times, coming close to succeeding on two occasions. But he was found by Sharon who called an ambulance.

Asked whether his despair was rooted in the fear that he might eventually try to act out the fantasies he was viewing online, he pauses.

Sharon tries to answer for him: "I don't think that was ever likely. He'd been fighting these feelings for so long and he'd been open about his problems with me. I don't believe he could have hurt a child."

Yet before she can continue, Henkel interrupts and with chilling honesty says: "Sharon, you're kidding yourself. Why do you think I tried to kill myself?

"I did realise that the fantasies were getting stronger and I was becoming more and more obsessed. After a while, the material you're viewing doesn't give you the same buzz and you look for more extreme versions.

"Eventually, the most hardcore images you could find wouldn't do it for you. I recognised that my fantasies were going in a direction I didn't like and that I might not be able to control myself.

"So, yes, I think there was a danger that I might have tried to get access to a child, and I really didn't want to go there.

"At that point, I wasn't sure where it was leading, but it could have ended up with somebody hurt because the fantasy of acting out what I was viewing was getting stronger."

Henkel began working at the IT firm nine years ago. Like thousands of other people, by the year 2000 he was receiving daily e-mail invitations to view "teen hotties" and "horny college girls".

He began viewing some of the sites and within four months he had progressed from looking at legal adult porn sites to accessing child porn through news groups - internet sites where people with similar interests share information.

Bill says: "I was sucked into this world of depravity. I became totally addicted. I spent hours at work when I didn't need to be there.

"The pull of the material was so strong that on several occasions, I'd be on my way home and would call Sharon to say there was a computer virus at work, and I was going to be late. Then I'd return for another session. It took over my life."

His technical knowledge of computers enabled him to take precautions against discovery by regularly wiping the hard drive.

The same tactic was used every three months by Gordon McIntosh, the paedophile who re-established Timothy Cox's website, Kids The Light Of Our Lives, once he had been arrested.

McIntosh, 33, from Hertfordshire, admitted to police after he was arrested that he would wipe clean his hard drive regularly in a fit of remorse but, like Henkel, would re-start soon afterwards.

A week before Henkel was caught he found images of himself and his brother as children, naked and looking miserable, online.

Their abuser had photographed them and the images were on the internet some 40 years later.

The haunting experience proved a turning point. For the first time, he could empathise with the children he was looking at.

He says: "My thinking was distorted until then. I didn't see children being abused. I saw them, as I believed, enjoying sexual activity.

"But I knew I'd been abused and I hadn't enjoyed what had happened to me.

"When I saw those pictures of myself, it helped me realise that children having sex with adults were victims, and by demanding to see these images online, I was contributing to the children's abuse.

"Yet although my thinking started to become clearer, and I didn't feel comfortable with what I was doing, it didn't stop me carrying on."

A week later, Henkel downloaded erotic paedophile fiction. Without realising, he sent the story to a printer on another floor of his office building.

He wonders now whether his subconscious pushed him to end the matter. The images Henkel had recently viewed online were also discovered.

During the 21 months before the trial reached court, the couple tried to find experts to help Henkel manage his compulsions.

His GP recommended Relate, but after three months of marriage counselling, the organisation concluded that they couldn't do any more for Bill.

A Harley Street psychologist put Henkel in touch with Ray Wyre, one of the UK's leading experts on sex offending.

Wyre proved a godsend for the couple. Sharon says: "While I was trying to support Bill, I was still wondering why he had to do it.

"Ray Wyre helped me realise the highly addictive nature of computers and pornography. Those who use their computer to access porn can access a limitless supply. Fantasy after fantasy can be fulfilled.

"Ray had seen it with other offenders he had worked with - the material just sucks them in and takes over their lives. It is highly corrosive.

"I can never excuse Bill for what he did, but it was important for me to hear someone explain that internet pornography is well-known for distorting reality and ruining lives."

Henkel also received therapy in jail. "The support available inside was first-class," he says.

"Especially the mental health service and support from the chaplain and his team at Bedford prison. They developed an amazing insight into my problems.

"I was taught to challenge my behaviour and to put the needs of victims before my own desires.

"The method is not fool-proof, but as long as I want to avoid offending, the correct strategies are in place."

Henkel continues: "I've been seeing Mr Wyre at intervals since I got out of jail, and I feel that with his help and Sharon's support I'm on top of things.

"For so many years I thought that if I told people my problems and my fantasies, they would despise me. But telling therapists and doctors has been my salvation.

"I'm sitting here with my wife and we are in love and supporting each other through this. I'm not suggesting that I can be cured of my fascination, but I have learned not to act on it, and to take precautions to ensure I don't even try."

Henkel says he believes that all sex offenders should be subject to extended sentences that would involve 15 to 20 years' community supervision after release from jail.

"Human rights groups might protest," he says. "But what about a child's right not to be abused? Which carries more weight? I know from my own experience that sentences must not only be longer but more appropriate to sexual offending.

"No monitoring period should be less than ten years, and if necessary it should be for life."

Henkel believes tough legislation should be passed to force the Internet Service Providers to clamp down on illegal activity online.

He says: "We've been hearing for years that it's too big a job, but it's not true. The ISPs simply have to monitor the smaller servers, and if they discover that much of their content is illegal - be it child porn or access to illegal drugs or dangerous chemicals - they should shut them down.

"It wouldn't catch everything, but that measure, combined with stiff penalties for those providing or promoting illegal material, would make a huge difference."

Henkel is not sure what the future holds, though he says he and Sharon have a very happy and "full" marriage.

He held a senior position at his former firm, but fears that the stress of another big job with a big salary might provoke a relapse.

"I'd rather stack shelves in a supermarket, earn less money and keep in control of my problems than risk an environment where I might slip back.

"I owe Sharon an awful lot and I don't want to let her down, or anyone else who has helped me."

Sharon signals her trust with a smile and squeezes his arm reassuringly. Only time will tell if her faith is well placed.