Former BBC producer found guilty of possessing or making indecent images of children

Police seized four devices from Dawes' Cardiff home in 2022 which contained more than 6,200 indecent images of children including 200 of the most serious Category A images.

Dawes told Cardiff Crown Court he had "no idea" how the images ended up on his devices, which included a Compaq laptop and Freecom hard drive.

Asked if he was a victim of someone else looking at pornography on his devices, Dawes responded: "Most definitely, yes."

The court heard how Dawes had worked in the former BBC Wales head office in Llandaff since 2001.

He said the devices were often left unattended and would be used by colleagues on a "regular basis" to store or move data.

Asked by Andrew Taylor, defending,if he could point to someone who might be responsible for the images, Dawes responded: "I have no idea."

He was asked by prosecutor Harry Baker during cross-examination why he said in a police interview he was "not aware" he had viewed indecent images of children, rather than denying it.

He replied: "That was the correct language."

Asked if he had seen the indecent images stored in the hard drive's recycle bin, Dawes said: "Absolutely not."

He agreed with Baker it was an "unfortunate coincidence" that indecent images were found on the four devices.

Dawes was then asked: "Would you say a more sensible explanation is that the owner of the four devices might have put them there?"

He replied: "No, I would not, because I did not put them there."

He said it was "categorically not true" that he had downloaded and viewed child pornography.

Dawes denied searching the term "jailbait" in Google and that he came across pictures of underage girls while browsing adult pornography websites.

His Gmail account was suspended three or four weeks before his arrest on 28 February 2022..

Dawes denied that suspension of the account had prompted him to "try and delete everything", stating: ""No, that's not correct."

Baker said: "You realised there was something up when the account was suspended?""No, because there was nothing on that account," said Dawes.