Photographer jailed for exploiting girls

Internet users paid to see the websites

A former ambulance driver who later set up a photographic agency, has been jailed for five and half years after admitting taking indecent pictures of young girls.

Mark Selley, 34, ran four internet sites of indecent images which earned him an annual income of around £250,000.

He operated his photography business from industrial units near St Austell, Cornwall, under the name of Carl McCoy.

He had previously worked for the ambulance service in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire for seven years.

This case has many of the worst features, including breach of trust and loyalty

Judge Jeremy Griggs

Selley pleaded guilty to a total of 23 charges, involving downloading pornographic material, taking indecent pictures and distributing indecent photographs.

He had breached the trust of nine local girls aged 13 upwards, Truro Crown Court heard.

The court heard how he took photographs of young girls, telling their parents they were model shots for American fashion magazines.

He would begin by taking conventional photographs, but after winning the trust of parents, some were persuaded to visit him alone.

He then secretly took photographs of them changing in rooms he had provided.

The indecent shots were then uploaded onto four websites he had set up.

Subscribers from all over the world paid from $16.95 (£10.90) to $19.95 (£12.80) a month to view the sites.

Selley earned about £250,000 a year from subscriptions to the sites, the court heard.

Fled police

Money was paid into an American billing company and then into a bank account in Latvia.

The images were discovered after Selley's BMW car was involved in a serious road accident outside Helston in which two people died in July 2001.

He fled the county when police attempted to question him about the crash and set up another photographic studio in Wiltshire.

Officers later found computers containing up to 250,000 images of young girls at his rented home in Challenger Quay, Falmouth, and another property in Crudwell, Wiltshire.

'Commercial exploitation'

Simon Laws, defending, said Selley was of previous good character as an ambulance driver in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire for seven years before voluntarily resigning in 1999.

Judge Jeremy Griggs said the case was one of "substantial and significant commercial exploitation".

He said: "This case has many of the worst features, including breach of trust and loyalty, lying to those who believed you, and selling at substantial profit to yourself indecent images."

Judge Griggs ordered that all the pictures he took, and the computer hard-drive on which they were stored, should be destroyed.

Selley was also ordered to go on the Sex Offender's Register for life.