Chris Langham given ten months for downloading child porn

September 14, 2007

British comedy actor Chris Langham has been sentenced to ten months imprisonment for downloading indecent images of children from the internet, less 43 days for the time he served in custody.

Langham, 58, most famous for his award-winning role in the sitcom The Thick of It was found guilty of 15 counts of downloading of child abuse, including sadism and non-consensual sex between adults and children. The police classified some of the images downloaded as category 5, the most severe grade. Langham claimed that he had used the images as research for a character in the BBC comedy Help, a paedophile character called, "Pedro". Langham was however, found not guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl and two counts of a serious sexual offence.

Passing sentence, Judge Philip Statman told Langham, "Some of the children viewed are clearly prepubescent, others are fully developed, some of the children are clearly of Filipino extract. All have had inflicted upon them horrifying sexual abuse and, I want to make this absolutely clear to you, I must think first of those children. When one sees their faces, in my judgment, they are vacant and lacking in expression... you never ever see the faces of the perpetrators. They are too young to consent. Your activity took place in the comfort of your own home, no doubt at the time feeling safe in the knowledge that you would never be caught."