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Cov Professor caught with 750 indecent images of children is spared prison

He also had videos of babies being abused


A retired Cov Uni lecturer has been spared prison despite having been searching the internet for indecent images of children and animal porn.

Police went to investigate at his £800,000 house in The Spinney, Coventry after receiving a tip-off.

73-year-old Michael Tovey was the former faculty head at Coventry University's Department of Industrial Design. He had almost 750 pictures and videos, including babies being sexually abused.

He claims he had "too much time on his hands" and as a result amassed a large collection of images and videos. Police found these on computers in his home.

Tovey admitted three charges of making indecent images of children. On Thursday 20th February he was handed a two-year community order at Warwick Crown Court. He has to complete 180 hours of unpaid work, pay £340 court fees and register as a sex offender for seven years.

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The court heard from Judge Peter Cooke that the choice for him to be spared prison was because “You were isolated to a degree you were unfamiliar with, and you had too much time on your hands, and you fell into deeply unfortunate patterns of behaviour which crossed the boundary into becoming criminal".

Cooke decided that his punishment would be a community order. “The prospects of you doing anything like this ever again are vanishingly low".

Police found 11 images including one movie, in the most serious category A, showing children being subjected to penetrative sex acts. There were a further 11 in category B of children taking part non-penetrative sexual activity and 749 images of children. There was also a movie showing a baby having oral sex performed on it.

There were also two drawings and one computer generated image depicting children in sexual poses and 131 images of extreme pornography showing women in sex acts with animals.