London (BN24) – A hospital consultant and former Armed Forces medic has been jailed for more than three years after police discovered a “staggeringly vast” collection of indecent images of children, including a so-called “paedophile manual,” on his electronic devices.
Dr. Matthew Isles, 53, who worked as an ear, nose and throat specialist at Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford, was sentenced to three years and 10 months at Stoke Crown Court on 13 separate offences. They included making and distributing indecent images of children, possessing prohibited images, extreme pornographic images and a manual containing instructions on child abuse, voyeurism, and two counts of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child.
The court heard that Isles was arrested in February after engaging in sexually explicit, grooming-type conversations on a gay dating app with someone he believed was a 14-year-old boy. The “teenager” was in fact an undercover officer. Although Isles initially ended the chat after acknowledging the supposed age, fearing prison, he later resumed contact to discuss meeting up. Prosecutors said he had also attempted to engage in sexual communication with a 15-year-old girl in what the judge described as “utterly calculated grooming.”
When police searched his home in Whiston, near Cheadle, Staffordshire, they seized multiple devices containing more than 90,000 indecent images and videos. Among them were 1,978 Category A images — the most severe — as well as thousands of Category B and C images and 459 prohibited images of children. Investigators also uncovered a folder labelled “Spycam” containing voyeuristic videos of a woman, recorded without her consent, and a detailed paedophile manual.
Judge Richard McConaghy rejected defence submissions for a suspended sentence, telling Isles: “Each and every image depicts a real child suffering real sexual abuse, some of it of the most depraved kind imaginable. There was a staggeringly vast quantity of images, by your own admission collected over a number of years.”
Prosecutor Hunter Gray said Isles distributed abuse material on at least three different platforms. In police interviews, Isles admitted to an “addiction to sex, pornography and child abuse material” and a compulsion to collect such content over the past five years.
Defending, Phil Bradley KC said his client had suffered a “catastrophic fall from grace,” adding that Isles’ medical career was “in tatters” and that he had shown early guilty pleas and some willingness to address his behaviour.
Isles, who waved at a woman in the public gallery as he was led from the dock, will serve half of his sentence in prison before being released on licence. He was also handed an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.
The University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust confirmed Isles is no longer employed there and that it fully cooperated with the investigation.
Detective Inspector Alex Glover, of Staffordshire Police’s public protection unit, said: “Isles sought out and hoarded images of the most horrific abuse of children. The continued circulation of child sexual abuse material normalises abuse and incentivises the creation of new content. We worked closely with NHS organisations and conducted a thorough investigation into the offences committed by Isles.”
Source: mirror.co.uk
