Ipswich man jailed after filming children
Ian Butcher, of Woodbridge Road East, appeared at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday.
A 55-year-old man from Ipswich has been jailed for the illegal filming or photographing of children and adults.
Ian Butcher, of Woodbridge Road East, appeared at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday, Monday 12 February, where he was sentenced to 20 months’ imprisonment.
He was also made subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for 10 years, which places restrictions on his use of any computer or device capable of accessing the internet and the storing of digital images. He must notify police of any purchase of such devices and allow officers access to inspect any devices or storage immediately on request.
Butcher had pleaded guilty at a previous court hearing on Friday 6 October to the following four offences:
one count of taking an indecent photograph of a child (namely taking six videos)
one count of making an indecent photograph of a child (namely the possession of 16 indecent images)
two counts of voyeurism (in both cases recording the private act of an adult)
The offences relate to eight separate victims, aged between 12-years-old and 32-years-old. Six are children and two are adults.
The incidents - which occurred over a period of 19 months - involved cases of children being filmed while getting undressed in a changing room; the possession of indecent images of children; and adults being filmed whilst showering.
The first incident was reported to Suffolk Police at the beginning of December 2022 by a teenage girl, who said she had been filmed by Butcher over the top of a cubicle in the changing rooms at a swimming pool a number of years earlier.
Detectives immediately began an investigation and Butcher was first arrested just over one month after this first disclosure, on 13 January 2023. Following his arrest, Butcher’s phone was seized and officers from the Internet Child Abuse Investigation Team were then able to analyse its contents.
A folder was found in the image gallery of his phone, which contained 11 videos, all of which were voyeuristic in nature and all but two appeared to have been filmed in changing cubicles at swimming pools. The remaining two appeared to have been filmed in a domestic setting.
There were also 20 screenshots, where the videos had been played and then a photo captured when nudity was visible. 16 of these were of children and four of an adult.
Eight victims were subsequently identified, but six remain unidentified. Of these at least three appeared to be children, with the others of an indeterminate age.
The court heard that Butcher had been a Scout leader at the time the offences had been committed, and he had been involved with the Scout Association for almost 40 years, reaching the level of Assistant District Commissioner. Some of the victims in these cases were children who were participating in scouting activities.
Detective Constable Santiago Nield, from the Internet Child Abuse Investigation Team, said: “Ian Butcher was a person in a position of trust and in the majority of the cases we identified, his offences involved a clear abuse of that trust.
“The crimes we discovered took place over a period of almost two years, so his offending was persistent for a significant length of time. Although not all of the victims were children, the majority were and so he clearly had a sexual interest in juveniles.
“I want to thank all the victims who have worked with us for their bravery, especially as the fact that they had been victims of this type of offence would’ve come as a complete surprise to them and a very disturbing one at that. They all had their privacy violated, but in the case of the children also their trust and part of their childhoods too.
“I would also like to commend the bravery of the first girl who made contact with us, who was clearly crucial to his offending being uncovered. She hadn’t felt able to come forward at the time the incident occurred, as she had been so shocked and didn’t want to believe it had happened, but as she got older she became more confident in herself and her recollections.
“I would also like to thank the Scout Association, who cooperated with our investigation from the outset and assisted us with whatever we required from them.
“Hopefully this case demonstrates that we listen to and hear victims of these types of offences and will investigate allegations, taking swift action wherever possible.”