Shropshire Star

Georgia Williams' mum calls for crackdown on vile internet videos

The mother of murdered teenager Georgia Williams has praised the country's top judge for warning that extreme internet pornography is driving "horrific" crimes.

Published
Stephen and Lynnette Williams. Inset: Their daughter Georgia.

Lynnette Williams said she was pleased the Lord Chief Justice highlighted violent videos as causing rapists and murderers to commit worse crimes than before the sick material was available online.

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd saw photographs that violent porn-obsessed Jamie Reynolds had taken of 17-year-old Georgia when he hanged her in a fantasy fuelled attack at his parents house in Avondale Road, Wellington, in 2013.

Lord Chief Justice said violent online videos are driving 'horrific' crimes

The Lord Chief Justice reviewed all the evidence before rejecting Reynolds' appeal against his full life sentence at the Royal Courts of Justice.

He told MPs that he was in no doubt that Reynolds' actions had been made worse by what he watched online.

"The first of the two cases has left me in no doubt that the peddling of pornography on the internet has a tremendous effect on that individual," the judge told the House of Commons' justice select committee.

"What's available now to download and to see is simply horrific and it played a real part in . . . the way in which this particularly horrible murder was carried out."

On how the online material affected the crime, he said: "I can't believe that someone would have thought through how to do something without having read everything."

When Reynolds was sentenced to life imprisonment at Stafford Crown Court in 2013, it was revealed he had harboured a sick obsession for at least five years with sexual violence against women, particularly in the form of hanging or strangulation.

By May 2013 he had downloaded more than 16,800 images and 72 videos of extreme pornography.

In a grim parallel, paedophile Mark Bridger looked at images of child abuse in the hours before he murdered five-year-old April Jones, from Machynlleth, Mid Wales, in 2012.

Murderers Mark Bridger and Jamie Reynolds.

On the afternoon before April disappeared, Bridger, 47, viewed a pornographic cartoon of a young girl gagged and restrained as she was being raped.

And internet searches on his laptop included "British girl murdered in France", "10-year-old girls naked" and "pictures of 10-year-old girls".

Mrs Williams, from Telford, said: "We are really pleased Lord Thomas has brought this to the forefront and highlighted Georgia's case and showed how severe it was in the eyes of the law."

She added: "If he can see that from having looked at the photos, it shows the impact these photos Reynolds was looking at should have had on police when they found them in 2008.

"I can't believe how readily accessible this extreme pornography is to anyone. I would like to see more done to prevent people from getting hold of it. I know parents can block it but the websites themselves should be protecting the public. Why is it even being made?

"I think we need to be hitting schools and saying to young people this isn't normal or acceptable in a relationship. The fact that it shows such degradation on a theatre like the internet, I'm sure that's why there's more cases. It's costing people lives."

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