Chris Langham

[ludermor]

Chris Langham tells of "horrific" time

LONDON (Reuters) - Actor Chris Langham, jailed earlier this year for downloading child pornography, spoke of the "horrific" consequences of his actions on Tuesday.

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Less than a week after he was released from jail after winning an appeal against the length of his sentence, Langham said he and his family had "paid a price".

The 58-year-old star of BBC's "The Thick of It" said he was penniless after spending tens of thousands of pounds on legal fees.

But he said he had been gratified by offers of work since his release and that his trial had been the "most therapeutic thing I've ever done", as it made him address the abuse he says he suffered as a child.

"I've had this little eight-year-old boy, which I've locked away inside me in a room with no doors and windows," he told Sky News. "And I've always told him to shut up, because he embarrasses me, and during the trial, for the first time, I had to get him out.

"I stood there in the dock and I held his hand and I said: 'I'm proud of you.' I'm never going to lock him up in that room again."

The appeal court ruled that the 10-month sentence imposed on the Bafta-award winning actor was too long, and reduced it to six months.

The father-of-five denies that he is a paedophile, and says he downloaded the images as part of research for a script he was writing at the time.

Langham said he had watched the first few seconds of just four of 15 video clips he downloaded, which included images of child torture.

"I only ever saw the first few seconds of them because I couldn't bear it. I found it too upsetting and distasteful and disturbing," he said.

He said he felt suicidal while standing trial.

"The day that I actually started walking around with a hosepipe to attach to the car exhaust I had a phone call from a guy in AA who I'd help get to his first couple of meetings, and I hadn't heard from him in about six months," he said.

"And he said: 'Listen, I'm really sorry to ring you. I know you haven't heard from me for a while, but I'm thinking of killing myself. Can you give me any reason why I shouldn't?'

"And I started telling him why I thought it would be a bad idea and I heard myself talk myself out of it."

Of his subsequent jail sentence at Elmley prison in Kent, Langham said it had been "vile" and spoke of the taunts he had suffered from fellow prisoners.

"The people in the cells (on) either side of me knew who I was, what I was in for, so there was a lot of banging on the walls and shouting abuse and threats and things."

Zoe Hilton, policy advisor of children's charity the NSPCC, said there was "never, ever a legitimate reason" to download indecent images of children.

"When you download images, you are contributing to a trade: real children are being used to produce images and we know, at the moment, there's a worrying increase in the number of images available, and that they are increasingly of younger and younger children and they're increasingly severe and nasty."


Not sure if this is the right analogy for him to use ''"I've had this little eight-year-old boy, which I've locked away inside me in a room with no doors and windows," he told Sky News. thats the kind of shit that got him in trouble in the first place

[Doogie Browser]

He was convicted by a Jury of his peers, he is a convicted Monster who because he is for want of a better word 'famous' he thinks he is above the law.  A dirty pervert of the highest order who got an all to light sentence in the first place.
It is a disgrace that he is even getting a platform to air his grievances.  I followed this trial through the press at the time (as I enjoyed 'The Thick of it') and the evidence was overwhelming, he paid for and downloaded Child Porn simple as that, every bit as culpable as the abusers themselves, should be a minimum tariff for these buckos.
He was also involved with a young girl from a very young age and although he got off on those charges he was 'messing' about with her from her mid teens.