Man guilty of abusing seven-year-old girl had 250,000 indecent images of children
A man was caught with nearly 250,000 indecent images of children including “upskirt” pictures of two young girls.
Konstantinos Hrisos (pictured), 63, pleaded guilty to 49 charges including sexually abusing a seven-year-old girl at Newcastle Crown Court, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
Officers discovered devices containing 246,829 abuse images – including 1,040 of the most severe category – when they raided his home in the Fenham area of the city in September last year.
Among his collection were “upskirt” pictures he had taken in a park of two girls aged around five and 12.
A probe found he had also been abusing a seven-year-old girl for at least a year and had taken more than 2,000 pictures and videos of her.
Graham Ellis, NCA operations manager, said: “Konstantinos Hrisos is a danger to children.
“He’s gone from downloading images online, to photographing children in a park, to eventually abusing a child.
“Hrisos’s offending has escalated in a way that the NCA is seeing in many other cases.
“The NCA knows that the scale and severity of this offending against children is worsening.
“We and UK police arrest around 450 child sex offenders a month and safeguard about 680 children a month.
“UK referrals from the tech industry of child sexual abuse material have jumped in recent years – from 43,072 in 2016 to 82,109 in 2017 and 113,948 in 2018.
“Behind every image is a child whose life has been utterly devastated by their abuse and men like Hrisos are perpetuating that suffering.”
Hrisos admitted 16 charges of taking indecent photographs of children; Nineteen counts of sexual touching of a girl under 13; nine counts of sexual assault; Three counts of making indecent images of children; One charge of voyeurism; and one count of possession of prohibited images.
He was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on September 6.
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