Court throws out paedophile's appeal against convictions

Tony Allison, 42, of Baldwin Street, Easington Colliery, used a webcam to film himself committing sex acts while his victims watched.

He asked one of them to take off her top and send him pictures of her breasts, London’s Appeal Court heard.

He was caged for five years, with a three-year extended license period, at Teesside Crown Court on February 9 last year.

In relation to one girl, he was convicted of five counts of indecency with a child.

And, in relation to the other, the jury convicted him of two counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, one of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child and one of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence.

His previous convictions included burglary, theft and making indecent photographs of children.

Allison appealed against the convictions relating to the second girl.

His grounds of appeal included criticisms of the judge’s summing up of the case to the jury and a complaint that his barrister failed to ‘attack’ the victim’s character in the witness box.

Throwing out his appeal, however, Lord Justice Lloyd Jones, sitting with Mr Justice Holgate and Sir John Griffith Williams, said he had ‘no arguable case that his convictions are unsafe’.