MPs have called for a crackdown on websites showing child pornography in the wake of the murder of April Jones, whose killer was found with a huge cache of obscene material.
Mark Bridger, 47, was jailed for the rest of his life on Thursday for abducting and murdering five-year-old April, whose disappearance in Wales last October sparked the biggest search in British history.
The trial heard that Bridger, a father of six children by four different women, was a “fantasist” who had a huge cache of pornographic images of young children on his computer.
He had watched a cartoon of a girl being raped hours before April went missing.
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, told The Times that the case had shown that “we need to act to remove such content from the internet”.
He called for a code of conduct to ensure that Internet service providers “remove material which breaches acceptable behaviour standards”, the newspaper reported.
Jim Sheridan, who sits on the Commons culture committee, told the Times it was “extremely difficult” to ban violent and sexual images, but added: “I think with the political will and the technology, if you can do it, we should be doing it.”
A jury at Mold Crown Court in Wales unanimously convicted Bridger of abducting and murdering April and of unlawfully disposing of and concealing her body with intent to pervert the course of justice.
Judge Griffith Williams said Bridger was a “pathological liar” who “set out to find a little girl to abuse.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that you are a paedophile, who has for some time harboured sexual and morbid fantasies about young girls,” Williams said as he sentenced Bridger to a lifetime in jail.
April’s body has never been found despite hundreds of members of the public joining the police search of the mountainous area criss-crossed by rivers near her hometown of Machynlleth in mid-Wales.
Speaking after Bridger’s conviction, April’s parents said they fear they may never find out the whereabouts of her body.
Paul and Coral Jones told The Sun there was “no way” that Mark Bridger would tell them where their daughter’s remains are to be found.
“It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest part,” Mrs Jones told the newspaper.
“It’s my worst nightmare come true.
“We haven’t got a body to give April a proper burial and that breaks my heart.
“Lots of people have questioned him, but he’s refused to tell us all along. If he’s lied to police, barristers, the judge, there’s no way he will tell me where my little girl is.”
Police believe Bridger, a former slaughterhouse worker, dismembered April’s body before dumping the body parts at various locations across the countryside surrounding his home in Cienws.
Traces of her blood were found all over his rented cottage, along with bone fragments, which April’s parents hope to retrieve in order to hold a funeral for their daughter.
“It’s all we’ve got and it’s looking like all we’ll ever get,” said Mr Bridger, adding: ” It’s so, so hard.”
MPs call for block on child porn after April murder
