Peter J King

An Oxford University academic, Peter J King, was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court for possessing and making thousands of indecent images of children. The 63-year-old philosophy lecturer, who had taught at several Oxford colleges since the 1980s, was discovered with 3,000 child abuse images on his computer equipment during a police search in August 2018.

The court heard that King had a prior caution in 2008 after police found similar images on his devices. He claimed the material was for research purposes related to a paper he later published on the ethics of child pornography. However, during the investigation, officers also found evidence that King had accessed a Russian file-sharing website to obtain the images. The indecent images depicted girls as young as five, highlighting the severity of the offences.

King's defence, represented by James Mulholland, acknowledged that the defendant had admitted to an 'addiction or compulsion' to 'repeatedly but intermittently' view indecent images of children. In pre-sentence discussions, King infamously compared his collection to 'someone who starts a sticker collection and wants the whole set', a remark that drew criticism from Judge Maria Lamb. She noted that King's 'no comment' interviews with police in 2018 and 2019 indicated he accepted his guilt 'rather late'.

King, residing in Churchill near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, had most recently been teaching at Pembroke College, Oxford. The college suspended him on 19 February 2020, after he informed them of his impending court appearance the following day. He pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of a child and one count of possessing prohibited images of a child.

Judge Lamb imposed a seven-month custodial sentence on King, along with a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order. Paula Appiah from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) stated: 'King held an esteemed position at a prestigious university, but his actions fell far short of the law. The law is in place to protect young children and we are dedicated to bringing perpetrators of this crime to justice.' The case was investigated by Thames Valley Police, underscoring their commitment to tackling child sexual exploitation.