Evidence needed to charge?
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We got the knock about 6 months ago. OH arrested on suspicion of sexual communication with a child. All our devices were taken. He was advised by solicitor to give a no comment interview. The 'child' was a police decoy on an app.
We got a call from the police about two weeks later to say no images had been found on our devices and we got most of them back the following week. However the police officer said that because it was a chat offence, my OH's phone would have to be sent away for analysis which would probably take over a year. He also said that if they don't find anything it will probably end up being NFA.
The date of the chat was about 10 months before my OH got arrested but the phone was only a couple of months old and he assures me there isn't anything on there that shouldn't be there.
We are a bit confused because apparently before the interview the solicitor seemed quite confident that there would be charges and the reason they needed the devices was just to get a bigger picture of the situation.
Has anyone had experience with this? Do the police always need the chats from the device itself to charge? Or is what they have from their side enough to charge regardless of what's on the devices?
The waiting and not knowing is so stressful.
We got a call from the police about two weeks later to say no images had been found on our devices and we got most of them back the following week. However the police officer said that because it was a chat offence, my OH's phone would have to be sent away for analysis which would probably take over a year. He also said that if they don't find anything it will probably end up being NFA.
The date of the chat was about 10 months before my OH got arrested but the phone was only a couple of months old and he assures me there isn't anything on there that shouldn't be there.
We are a bit confused because apparently before the interview the solicitor seemed quite confident that there would be charges and the reason they needed the devices was just to get a bigger picture of the situation.
Has anyone had experience with this? Do the police always need the chats from the device itself to charge? Or is what they have from their side enough to charge regardless of what's on the devices?
The waiting and not knowing is so stressful.
No they don't need the evidence from the phone, they will have the chat logs as it was police decoy. My persons phone didn't have the chat logs on either they were still charged, received 2 year suspended 4.5 years after the knock.
Ok, that's interesting to know. How did the police prove that it was your OH who sent the messages? Were there any images found?
they knew it was him from our ip address I suppose?
My OH was convicted of sexual communication with a police decoy about her "children". He was charged with obscene publications (1959), no SOR or SHPO and no images involved. He is on probation until September. It's the SS side of things that are a bloody nightmare, they won't let him live at home and daughter has been on a CPP since last August. Offence was committed in August 2023 x
My person was charged and sentenced with no evidence on his phone. He did admit at the earliest opportunity though which the judge praised him for during sentencing.