Former Labour Government MP Jailed for Just 28 Months for Possessing Child Porn

A former MP who previously served in a Labour Party government has been jailed after being found with nearly 1,500 indecent images of children.

Paul Clark, 66, the former Labour Party MP for Gillingham in Kent from 1997-2010, will be jailed for just 28 months after being found in possession of nearly 1,500 images of child pornography. He will also be put on the Sex Offenders’ List for a decade.

Clark had formerly served as a junior minister within Tony Blair’s government, as well as acting as the private secretary for a variety of high-ranking figures in the party, including former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and education secretary Ed Balls.

According to a report by LBC, Clark pled guilty to both making and distributing indecent images of children back in December with police having found him in possession of 298 Category A videos and stills, 415 Category B,  and 733 Category C after a raid on his home, totalling just under 1,500 indecent images of children.

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“I kept telling myself to stop,” the former parliamentarian reportedly told police during the raid, also informing officers that he “knew” why they were there.

None of the offences occurred at a time when Clark was serving as an MP, the Labour Party’s veteran’s lawyer claimed, with prosecutors saying that the vast majority of the images were downloaded during periods of COVID lockdown.

Sentencing Clark, the proceeding judge described the politician’s fall from grace as “tragic”, adding that “jail was inevitable” due to the seriousness of the charges put against him.

Prosecutor Catrin Attwell said: “Examination of the electronic devices revealed offences relating to indecent images of children on five devices, this included imagery of children as young as three and a high number of moving images.

“The electronic devices also revealed chatlogs in which Clark discussed his sexual desires, distributed indecent images of children to others for their sexual gratification and used social media to identify and talk to users under the age of 18.

“Our Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit was set up in April 2022 to prosecute child sexual abuse. We work closely with law enforcement agencies to build strong cases against offenders using the internet and social media to commit sexual offences and are determined to help stop the devastating impact of these crimes on victims and bring offenders to justice.”

Correction: This story originally was published with the wrong photo.  We regret the error.