Expert testimony that a Trojan horse infection of his computer could have put fourteen child porn images onto his hard drive without his knowledge meant freedom for Karl Schofield.
The prosecution accepted that testimony and the 39-year-old communications engineer prevailed in what is believed the first known instance in which the Trojan horse defense won the day, according to the London Register.
"The Crown would not be able to say (Schofield) is the only person who knew of these images on his computer," prosecutor Nadia Chbat was quoted as telling Judge Stanley Spence.
Child porn fighters as a rule believe that an actual child porn collector would more likely have hundreds if not thousands of files, rather than the fourteen found on Schofield's computer. "I am certain," said one child porn fighter who spoke on condition of anonymity, "that a small percentage of child pornography is downloaded through Trojan horses, popups, and other worms and viruses...Unless one is a technical whiz and can delete all traces of a file, if they only found fourteen images I would think that might be the case."
The April 24 verdict ended a two-year nightmare for Schofield since he was first charged in the case. "I knew I would be found not guilty," he told the Reading Evening Post. "It was ridiculous because there was not one dirty mag or dirty video in the house I was living in with my dad, mum and wife."
The Evening Post said a computer expert discovered the Trojan horse alongside the child porn authorities found on Schofield's computer. The expert also believed the Trojan horse arrived the day before the first of the child porn images did. Schofield had testified that the Trojan could have infected his computer by way of e-mail or pop-up ad screens that appear often enough when surfing the Web.
Just being charged with child porn he never sought was hard enough on Schofield - when his case became public knowledge, the Evening Post said, he was attacked at his home, causing him to hide for a month and shy away from his two children from a previous marriage because of the stigma. Ultimately, the paper said, Schofield moved out of the Whitley section of Reading.
"My friends and family stood by me," he told the paper, "but I hope it puts people’s minds at rest there’s not a pervert sat in Whitley."
