WATCH: Restaurant worker convicted over child images

Tuesday 08 October 2019

A 28-year-old man has been found guilty of stashing 55 indecent images of children in a secret 'vault' app on his mobile phone.

Charged with one count of making the indecent images, Cristiano Jose Neto Sousa was convicted yesterday following a one-day Royal Court trial.

The Court was told that Sousa did not deny that the images were on his phone or that they were indecent, but he claimed that they had been sent to him via the messaging platform WhatsApp and, due to a setting on his phone, had then been saved automatically to the password-protected ‘vault’ app.

The charge, which Sousa denied, stated that he had made the 55 indecent images by saving them onto this separate app called ‘Gallery Vault’ between January and June last year.

Video: Sousa leaving Court after a one-day trial resulted in his conviction.

Opening the case, Crown Advocate Richard Pedley explained that the "main issue" was "whether or not these images or videos were placed in the ‘Gallery Vault’ app deliberately."

The prosecutor told Court that, in the background, Sousa had also been “grooming an underage girl to have sexual relations with him” and “sending her obscene images” – charges he had already pleaded ‘guilty’ to.

Although this didn’t prove his guilt in relation to the indecent images, the Crown Advocate argued that it proved a “sexual interest in female children."

He said that “to suggest that a man who has a demonstrable interest in female children” was simply sent these images “out of the blue” without viewing or saving them “is an affront to common sense."

Called to give evidence, a Police mobile device investigator said that, after running the phone through the Police software, some images were showing as encrypted due to being in the ‘Gallery Vault’ app. 

After gaining access to the app, the forensic investigator was able to extract the rest of the images. He testified that it’s possible that images arriving via WhatsApp would automatically save to the photo gallery on the phone itself, but that they would need to be deliberately transferred to end up on the ‘Gallery Vault’ app - rather than happening automatically.

Facing cross-examination from the defence lawyer, Advocate Chris Hillier, the investigator told the Court that he didn’t test the functions of the privacy app on Sousa’s phone itself, but that he used a similar handset with a more up-to-date version of the app. 

Pictured: The trial centred on a private app installed on Sousa's phone.

In questioning the investigator, Advocate Hillier suggested that the version which was installed on his client’s phone could have had a feature which allowed images sent to him by WhatsApp to automatically save into the ‘vault’.

The investigator said that he couldn’t categorically say Sousa’s version of the app didn’t have this feature. However, he emphasised that it was unlikely, noting that he had never come across a feature which allows ‘auto-saves’ to third-party apps of this kind.

Questioned by his own advocate later on, Sousa said that he’d found out about the app because he was embarrassed when pornographic images of adults that he’d downloaded onto his phone were displaying in his regular photo gallery.

In his evidence, Sousa claimed that his cousin told him about this app after noticing the pornographic images on his phone.

Sousa said he then let his cousin download the ‘vault’ app onto his phone and it was him who altered the settings so that any images arriving by WhatsApp would save automatically there rather than in the regular gallery.

When asked if he moved the images from the phone gallery to the gallery vault manually, Sousa said: “No.”

Facing a grilling from Crown Advocate Pedley, Sousa said that he had ended up in the WhatsApp group that sent him the images after following a link on a Facebook group, but he couldn’t remember which one or who sent him the images. 

The Crown Advocate challenged Sousa’s testimony by reminding him that he had said in interview with the Police that he had “placed the images in the vault”. Giving a reason for this, he said he had done so after seeing them “because they are stuff that concerns me”.

In Court, Sousa denied ever saying this in interview and challenged the Crown Advocate to re-listen to the recordings. He also blamed the translation of the Police interview, saying “a lot of things are completely different” in Portuguese than in English.

Pictured: The trial took place in the Royal Court over one day.

Sousa also denied having a sexual interest in female children and claimed that he “went 'guilty' on [the grooming charge] just to get things sorted out quickly”. 

Closing his case, the Crown Advocate characterised Sousa’s testimony “not [as] a subtle shift of stance from what he said in interview", but rather "a complete reversal of what he said".

Remarking on the lack of evidence to corroborate his account and that fact that Sousa’s “credibility is in tatters”, the prosecutor invited the Court to convict him on the single charge. 

Advocate Hillier said that the Court could not be sure that his clients took “active steps… to save these images to the ‘Gallery Vault’".

The defence lawyer argued that the “simple answer” to this case was that there was a setting on the phone and “that these images were saved automatically”.

He urged the Court that “circumstantial evidence” and “other elements of my client’s life” are “not relevant to the binary decision of were there settings in place or not”.

Royal Court Commissioner Sir Michael Birt presided over the trial and the case was heard by Jurats Hughes and Blampied, who unanimously decided to convict Sousa of the offence.

He will remain in custody until his sentencing date on 9 December.