Couple abused toddler naked amid catalogue of child abuse spanning years

Couple abused toddler naked amid catalogue of child abuse spanning years

29 January 2020

NEWCASTLE paedophiles Gary and Heather Talbot — who photographed themselves naked abusing a toddler — have been warned by a judge that they face “significant” jail sentences.

The couple were told by Judge Piers Grant that their case involved very serious offences in which they had betrayed the trust of a very young child and that it was only realistic for them to expect to be given significant jail terms when sentenced next month.

The Talbots, from Kinghill Avenue, pleaded guilty last year to a series of sex offences, committed between 2001 and 2003 against a child then aged 18 months to when she was three years and three months old.

Gary Talbot, a 60 year-old postman and bus driver, admitted 16 charges, including two counts of rape, gross indecency, indecent assault, and taking and distributing indecent images of a child. 

He also admitted a separate charge of sexually assaulting a 13 year-old child some time between July 2012 and July 2014.

His 59 year-old wife, Heather Talbot, admitted 10 charges, including aiding and abetting her husband to rape the little girl, indecently assaulting her, committing acts of gross indecency and three charges of taking indecent images of the youngster.

At Downpatrick Crown Court, sitting in Belfast, last Thursday the pair sat in the dock just yards from their now grown-up victim, who was in the public gallery supported by family and friends.

At one stage Gary Talbot, who listened to the details of his crimes with eyes closed shut, appeared to shake his head from side to side, while his wife kept looking to the side, her eyes cast down.

Lawyers for the depraved pair told the court that little could be said in their mitigation, save their guilty pleas, demonstrative of their remorse and shame, and for which they were entitled to credit in determining their ultimate sentence.

Lawyers also revealed that Gary Talbot enjoyed an enhanced status in prison where he was leading a model existence as a prisoner: by contrast his wife was reported to be finding custody hard, self-isolating and living under threat and constant fear.

Earlier, prosecutor David McDowell QC outlined in detail — too graphic to report — the couple’s perverted abuse of the youngster and of internet chats and boasts to other paedophiles, which were recovered on a variety of computer equipment seized from their home in October 2017.

He also revealed an external hard-drive was recovered from a locked bedroom cupboard, the key of which was secreted within the pages of the novel Lolita, a book about a man obsessed with a 12 year-old girl, found on a bedside table.

Mr McDowell said a total of 47 indecent images, apparently recording three separate occasions of abuse, including rape, were taken of the toddler. Some of them showed the couple naked.

Mr McDowell said that while initially making a “no comment” police interviews, Gary Talbot denied any sexual interest in children, before admitting by his third interview: “It is just the wrong road I have taken.”

While he initially disputed claims of raping the child, until shown “a clear photograph”, and denied knowingly sharing the pictures, Talbot did finally admit to being “totally ashamed” — although he claimed he only “looked at the image twice in 15 years, but not for sexual gratification”.

However, Mr McDowell said Talbot later accepted “going through a phrase where he was sexually attracted to children. It was “around this time when he abused” the toddler, and “it was he who had introduced children to his and Heather’s sexual relationship”.

Gary Talbot also accepted that it was his idea to buy clothes and dress up the child especially for posing and pictured her in bed surrounded by pornographic magazines. However, he claimed the youngster had posed with the magazines “of her own accord”.

Mr McDowell said Gary Talbot “struggled to explain” their online chatroom activities, where the couple used the names ‘Mike and Fiona’. However, while claiming “he was embellishing for the sake of the chats”, Talbot later confirmed he had been talking about the toddler and that he shared the indecent images of her.

Mr McDowell said that under questioning Heather Talbot she said she was “60 - 70% confident” the images were of the toddler, but denied being aware of the photograph of her husband raping the toddler.

Mr McDowell said Heather Talbot initially described their crimes as “just a fantasy that we carried too far”, before correcting herself, saying, ‘It was his fantasy, not mine really”, and that “she played along”.

Mr McDowell said by her last interview Heather Talbot repeated her denials of taking the photographs, claiming the rape pictures were “taken using a tripod and when she dressed the toddler up, she did not think it would go as far as it did”.

However, when asked what she would say to the now grown-up toddler, Heather Talbot said she would apologise, “for what he’s done to her”, whilst still maintaining, “she hadn’t done anything”.