A man who collated and distributed more than 2,000 images of child sexual abuse has had his sentence increased to four years in prison by the Court of Appeal.
The change comes after Rape Crisis England & Wales wrote to the Solicitor General, Michael Ellis QC to request a review of the sentence under the Unduly Lenient Sentencing scheme, and he subsequently intervened.
Haitch Macklin was originally sentenced to just 20 months' imprisonment on 15th April 2020, after pleading guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children (IIOC) and two of showing it.
Rape Crisis England & Wales Policy Officer, Amelia Handy said:
"Our main focus as an organisation is on the needs and rights of victims and survivors of sexual violence and abuse, and we rarely comment on the treatment of individual sexual offenders.
But on this occasion, we felt compelled to contact the Solicitor General over our deep concerns about the alarmingly low sentence handed down for such serious crimes.
Child sexual abuse can have significant, lifelong and wide-ranging impacts on the physical, mental and emotional health, well-being and lives of those subjected to it.
Those who produce, collect and distribute imagery and footage of these traumatic crimes cause no less harm than other perpetrators of sexual violence and abuse, and there was no doubt that this man is a very dangerous sexual offender."
The National Crime Agency said the material Macklin was profiting from selling access to was "some of the most horrific and disturbing content" its investigators had ever seen.
His 'collection' included sexual torture videos of babies and toddlers and Macklin also spoke of his desire to acquire films showing real-life murders of children.