Compton voyeur David Cosgrave set up online ‘child porn’ ring for paedophiles

A PAEDOPHILE caught with many thousands of child sex images also filmed unsuspecting adult males in public toilets.

David Cosgrave’s collection of indecent pictures featured babies as young as just 12 months old.

He had tried to hide them behind encrypted software – and there were so many that police gave up trying to number and categorise them all.

Many of them were in Category A – the most serious, said to depict penetrative sex, torture or bestiality.

When police raided his home they also found a collection of secretly filmed videos of adult men urinating in local public toilets.

The 61-year-old, of Hockham Road, Compton, was said to have been deeply involved in paedophile rings which shared sick fantasies and images and had begun his collection 20 years before he was finally caught.

Lucy McGarr, prosecuting, said he even set up one group of his own to encourage fellow paedophiles to share what she described as “child porn” and got impatient with those who didn’t co-operate.

Cosgrave admitted multiple charges of possessing and sharing indecent images of children, plus several offences of voyeurism by filming unsuspecting men urinating in public toilets.

More charges involving outraging public decency by having sex in public were left to lie on file.

But, at a sentencing hearing at Reading Crown Court on Thursday, September 12, Cosgrave went home from the dock with a suspended sentence after Belinda Knight, defending, said her client had taken steps to rehabilitate himself, including engaging with the group Sex Addicts Anonymous.

She added: “He has made real inroads.

“Since 2020, Covid was a hard time for many people but for my client things came to a head.

“It could have been the breaking point in his relationship [with his partner] but, thankfully, not.

“This has been hanging over him [since his arrest] for four years and, in that time, he has availed himself of everything we can think of to put right the wrongs of the situation.”

Ms Knight acknowledged that Cosgrave was deemed a medium risk of serious re-offending but pleaded with the judge to suspend any custodial sentence.

Judge Rachel Drake told Cosgrave he had shown “determination” in pursuing his sexual interest in children over 20 years, although he had shown reluctance to acknowledge the fact, and had used “highly sophisticated” encryption methods.

Regarding the public toilet voyeurism offences, she said: “It only takes a moment’s thought to realise how unpleasant it would be for those men to discover they had been filmed in that private act.”

Nevertheless, added Judge Drake, “you have shown an unusual level of insight [into your offending] and that goes greatly to your credit.”

She went on: “You’ve done an awful lot of work to seek help and to try to understand the underlying reasons for your offending and to take preventative steps to ensure you don’t offend again.”

Cosgrave was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment, suspended for 18 months.

The prosecution had asked for a nominal £1,000 contribution to costs but Judge Drake noted that Cosgrave had had to pay for his own legal counsel and so halved that figure to £500.

Finally, Cosgrave was ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years and made subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for the same period.