Former Wales auditor general admits possessing child porn

The former auditor general for Wales was in custody today after admitting possessing scores of indecent images of children. Jeremy Colman, 62, who suddenly stepped down from his £170,000-a-year job in February, pleaded guilty to 14 offences connected with possessing and making pornographic images of children. He had previously denied possessing and making 429 indecent images of children between October 2008 and January 2010. But his guilty pleas came on the first day of what was to be a trial at Cardiff crown court after the prosecution agreed to reduce the overall number of images to 182. Colman also admitted a 15th charge of failing to disclose a password to allow police to access information on a USB memory stick. His barrister, Wendy Hewitt, asked for Colman to be granted bail when the judge adjourned proceedings to 19 November for pre-sentence reports. She said that Colman, who has homes in south Wales and in Cambridgeshire, had been of "impeccable character". She acknowledged that, because of the nature of the offences, "a custodial sentence is almost an unavoidable outcome". But she said granting bail would give him time to "put his house in order". But the Cardiff recorder, Nicholas Cooke QC, denied bail because he had concerns that sentencing could be held up. He said he was also concerned that when police seized computers at Colman's Welsh home, all of the hard drives were missing. Colman had also used a programme on his work computer to delete information from it. When arrested he had not co-operated with police and had given "no comment" answers to any questions they asked.