'Lying' Leeds pervert claimed he downloaded child abuse images 'just to be arrested'

Lee Parnell admitted seven charges of possessing indecent images and possessing prohibited images, but then spun the fanciful story about his reasoning at Leeds Crown Court. The 39-year-old said that despite searching and downloading more than 1,500 images and videos for years, he never once looked at them.

Having been convicted for downloading similar material before, Parnell gave evidence in the dock this week saying he suffered from a depressive disorder, had no friends and was lonely. He said he “incidentally” came across the files when looking at extreme violent images.

He bizarrely claimed he wanted to “drag himself through the mud” with an ambition to be caught or to “live in fear” to punish himself, so spent between November 2016 and June 2022 searching out and storing the sickening files.

But Judge Andrew Stubbs KC, and prosecutor Frances Pencheon, raised questions over why he stored some on an external hard-drive if he did not wish to keep and look at them, and why he used a software-wiping app to cover his tracks. Evidence showed that he had even used the app just two days before he was arrested.

After rejecting Parnell’s story, Judge Stubbs jailed him for 12 months. He also gave him a 10-year sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) to limit his internet use, and put him on the sex offenders register for 10 years.

Miss Pencheon said Parnell, of Burley Wood View, Burley, was convicted of possessing indecent images in 2016, but was only given a three-year community order and a five-year SHPO.

The police were tipped off last year about abuse images being shared from Parnell’s IP address and arrested him at home on June 28. They found 1,545 images and videos stored involving children as young as two. They raged from the most serious, category A, to category C.

The dates showed that when he made his 2016 court appearance, he was still secretly continuing to trawl the web for material.