Old Boy's Child Sex Shame

A child porn addict – who attended illustrious Shrewsbury School - was caught when an outraged internet café customer flagged down police after spotting him viewing hard-core images of teenage boys in public.

Journalist Hugh Sohn, 49, a member of the Old Salopian Football Club, was arrested on the spot and a police search of his nearby home at Flat 1, 104 Harmood Street, Camden, revealed a collection of child porn.

In Sohn’s day Shrewsbury School was a boy’s only private boarding school for thirteen to eighteen year-olds.

Founded in 1552 - motto 'If right within, trouble not' - the  £27,000 a-year school occupies a 100-acre site and attracts pupils from all over the country.

Well-known Old Boys include Charles Darwin, Monty Python's Michel Palin, late DJ John Peel and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees.

First-time offender Sohn pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing indecent photographs of children aged between eight and fifteen on or before August 21, last year and six counts of making indecent photographs on or about the same date.

Prosecutor Miss Laureen Fleischmann told Blackfriars Crown Court Sohn was arrested at a Camden internet café when another customer reported him to police.

Officers seized his computer, plus CD’s and a video and found a total of 37 images of boys aged between eight and fifteen engaged in sexual activity. “They all involved boys on boys.”

Sohn’s lawyer Mr Ian Dowty told the court: “This was someone who’s psychiatric health was deteriorating and he chose this method as a form of self-medication.

“The outrageousness of his actions in a public internet café suggests he wanted to be stopped.

“He expresses deep remorse and sorrow and is coming to appreciate what he has been doing and how wrong that is,” added the lawyer. “He is determined this will not happen again.”

Judge John Hillen, sentencing Sohn to three years probation and ordering him to sign the Sex Offender’s Register for five years told him: “You have an addiction to pornography of this kind.

“The images were offensive and it is upsetting to see children being encouraged to engage in behaviour of this kind. They were being encouraged to do it for your masturbatory pleasure.”

Sohn, a freelance sub-editor, who has been off work with depression was ordered to comply with a sex offender’s treatment order as a condition of probation and was slapped with a three-year pornography ban.