Conor McGrath, 29, admitted to having 77 category A images, 109 category B images, and 329 category C images and videos between June 2024 and March 2025.
A former aide to a Labour MP has been spared jail after downloading more than 500 indecent images of children.
Conor McGrath, 29, was a borough councillor in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, between 2023 and 2025. He also worked for Stevenage MP Kevin Bonavia, who has condemned McGrath’s “sickening criminality”.
McGrath was handed an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, on Friday after he pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children last month.
“If you find your way back to me for offences of this type… I will revoke that order and off to prison you will go,” Judge Jonathan Mann KC told McGrath.
The defendant admitted to having 77 category A images, 109 category B images, and 329 category C images and videos between June 2024 and March 2025.
He was arrested on 25 March last year on an unrelated matter and police seized several of his devices, including an iPhone and iPad.
After being released under investigation, McGrath met a colleague at a pub and told them about being worried officers would find “rude photographs” on his device and think he was a paedophile, as well as deleting or trying to delete images on his devices, the trial heard.
Officers launched a second search and seizure at McGrath’s home after a referral was made to the Metropolitan Police Parliamentary Diplomatic Protection Command following the meeting with the colleague, with police eventually finding indecent images on the iPhone and iPad they originally seized.
Claire Beards from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “The volume and nature of the indecent images that McGrath collected and stored showed his sustained and unlawful sexual interest in children.
“Some of the images were among the most serious and disturbing for which a person can be prosecuted.”
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