Nottinghamshire man who had 'paedophile manual' made chilling statement in prison diary

After police raided the home of Ashley Holmes they uncovered a disturbing series of documents and images

Police found a “paedophile manual” describing in detail how to sexually abuse babies and children in online storage used by a Nottinghamshire sex offender. Analysis also found that Ashley Holmes had viewed vile images and videos of babies being tortured and raped by adults.

After he was remanded into custody having been arrested, a diary recovered from the 26-year-old’s cell showed he had scrawled horrific statements including “I rape toddle(r)s” and “babies love sex”. In another disturbing diary entry, Holmes wrote “Goals out of prison - kidnap a toddler”.

Sam Lowne, prosecuting at Nottingham Crown Court, said officers executed a warrant at the defendant’s address in Beeley Avenue, Sutton-in-Ashfield, on March 21, 2023. He said: “A search of the address was then carried out during which a Samsung Galaxy S7 was recovered.

“The defendant was asked for the PIN number of the phone but remained silent. However, it was then established by officers that the PIN number was the defendant’s birthday, followed by the number 24.

“The phone was forensically examined with the results revealing concerning search terms such as ‘teens sex’ and there were also results pertaining to ‘toddlers’ and ‘child porn.”

Mr Lowne said further investigations then showed that Holmes had an online cloud storage account which was based in New Zealand. He said on it were 751 and 16,011 videos and indecent images of the most serious category A; 836 and 5,514 category B; 6,271 and 3,705 category C and extreme pornography showing humans and animals engaged in sexual activity.

The prosecutor said: “The Category A images show mainly boys aged from babies 0 to 3 months to 16 years however the majority are under 10 and a large number are babies 0 to 2 years. In many of the images, the children and babies are clearly distressed. The forensic officer identified six copies of a paedophile manual which described in detail how to sexually abuse babies and children.”

Mr Lowne said after being remanded into custody, Holmes's cell was searched and the diary containing disturbing entries was found. The defendant pleaded guilty to possession of indecent images of children and possession of extreme pornography.

He has no previous convictions of any kind. Judge Michael Auty KC handed him a nine-year sentence which is made up of five years custody and a four-year extension for dangerousness. He also placed him on the sex offender register for life and handed him a lifetime sexual harm prevention order.