Background
Romain Bornes, a French national studying in the United Kingdom, was found in possession of nearly 4,000 indecent images of children on his mobile phone following a police intelligence-led operation. The images comprised 1,058 Category A (penetrative sexual activity), 1,396 Category B (non-penetrative sexual activity), and 1,565 Category C images. Bornes had also engaged in sexually explicit online conversations and actively distributed 22 Category A and 3 Category B images — including videos depicting the rape of children aged 4 to 8 — over a period running from July 2022 to May 2023, when he was aged 20 to 21.
Bornes pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court in January 2026 and was committed to the Crown Court at Oxford for sentence. In February 2026, His Honour Judge Hassan Khan sentenced him to 28 months’ imprisonment, with the lead offence being distribution of Category A indecent images. The judge identified significant aggravating factors — including the very young age and vulnerability of the victims, the high volume of images, the presence of moving images among those distributed, and the approximately year-long duration of offending — while also crediting substantial mitigation, including good character, genuine remorse, a personal history of abuse, ADHD and neurodiversity diagnoses, and completion of over 87 psychotherapy sessions.
A procedural issue also arose from a charging error: the charges as drafted particularised dates extending back to 2003, a period when Bornes was below the age of criminal responsibility and before the relevant statutory provisions were in force. The Court of Appeal addressed this issue, with both parties agreeing the convictions were not thereby rendered unsafe, and the case having been prosecuted and sentenced throughout on the correct factual basis of offending between July 2022 and July 2023.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal (Lady Justice Andrews, Mr Justice Jay, and Mrs Justice Thornton) dismissed the appeal. The court held that the pre-credit sentence of 3½ years was not manifestly excessive given the totality of the offending. The judge was entitled to treat the Category A distribution count as the lead offence and to adjust it upward to reflect the full breadth of criminality, including the separate Category B distribution offences and the substantial volume of images possessed — the possession of nearly 4,000 images could not be treated as subsumed within the distribution of only 25 images.
The court rejected the appellant’s argument that the mitigating factors significantly outweighed the aggravating ones and should have yielded a sentence capable of suspension. While acknowledging the weight of the mitigation, the court agreed with the sentencing judge that the case remained very serious, particularly given the active distribution of moving images depicting the rape of very young children. The Sentencing Council Totality Guideline permitted, and in the circumstances required, an upward adjustment beyond the starting point for any single offence.
On the charging date error, the court applied the principle from R v Gould [2021] EWCA Crim 447 and held that the obvious error in the date range could simply be ignored by agreement, as all parties and the judge had proceeded throughout on the correct factual basis. The committal and sentence were therefore lawfully passed.
Key Takeaways
- Where a defendant distributes a small number of indecent images but separately possesses thousands more, the possession cannot be treated as subsumed within the distribution for sentencing purposes; an upward totality adjustment to the lead offence is appropriate.
- Even extensive personal mitigation — including remorse, good character, youth, neurodiversity, a history of abuse, and active engagement with treatment — will not necessarily reduce a sentence to a suspendable level where distribution of Category A moving images depicting the rape of very young children is involved.
- A typographical or drafting error in the dates specified in criminal charges does not invalidate a conviction or sentence where all parties and the court have proceeded on a common and accurate understanding of the factual basis: following R v Gould [2021] EWCA Crim 447, such errors can simply be ignored by agreement.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the Court of Appeal’s approach to totality sentencing in child sexual abuse image cases: where an offender both distributes and possesses indecent images at scale, the sheer volume of material possessed is a legitimate and significant factor in calibrating the overall sentence, even where the number of images actually distributed is comparatively small. Sentencing judges are not required to treat possession as automatically absorbed into distribution.
The case also offers a practical illustration of how courts handle charging errors that straddle pre-statutory periods or times when a defendant was below the age of criminal responsibility. Provided the factual basis of sentence is clear and agreed, rigid formalism in the charge drafting will not unwind an otherwise lawful conviction — a useful clarification for practitioners dealing with offences particularised over long date ranges.