Former Rye priest sentenced over indecent child images

Paul Clarke, now of Urmston, Manchester, but formerly of Watchbell Road, will also be a registered sex offender for ten years and was given a sexual harm prevention order to last indefinitely, severely restricting his access to computers at Lewes Crown Court.

The 71-year-old pleaded guilty to a number of charges: one concerned his possession of an indecent image of a child, another concerned his possession of prohibited images, and three concerned his making a total of 3100 indecent images of children.

All the offences involved images taken from the Internet. There is no evidence of contact offending and none of the images are of local children.

The prosecution followed an intelligence-led investigation by the Paedophile On-Line Investigation Team of Sussex Police.

Officers had executed a search warrant at Clarke’s Rye address, the residential presbytery attached to St Anthony’s Church, on November 13, 2014, and seized computers and related material.

Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.

Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be amongst the first to know what’s going on.

1) Make our website your homepage at www.ryeandbattleobserver.co.uk/

2) Like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/RyeandBattleObserver

3) Follow us on Twitter Text to display

4) Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here.

And do share with your family and friends - so they don’t miss out!

The Rye and Battle Observer - always the first with your local news.

Be part of it.