A convicted far-right extremist with an interest in satanism who was given a suspended sentence as a teenager has now been imprisoned after admitting further crimes including making an indecent photograph of a child.
Harry Vaughan, from Twickenham, south-west London, was 18 when he admitted 14 terrorism offences and two of possessing indecent images of children during his first trial at the Old Bailey.
Mr Justice Sweeney handed Vaughan a two-year suspended sentence in November 2020 along with a 60-day rehabilitation order and a terrorist notification order for 10 years.
In June, the 21-year-old, who now goes by the name Harry Blake, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to making an indecent photograph of a child in September 2022.
He also admitted three charges of possessing extreme pornographic videos, three counts of failing to comply with a Serious Crime Prevention Order (SPCO) and three breaches of his notification order.
The breaches, which began a month after his original sentence, related to failing to tell authorities about an email address and details of cryptocurrency accounts.
In relation to the newer offences, Vaughan has been jailed for 38 months and was handed an SPCO of five years at the Old Bailey on Thursday.
At his previous trial in 2020, the court heard that the then-teenager developed an interest in rightwing extremism, Satanism, the occult and violence after disappearing “down a rabbit hole of the internet” from the age of 14.
Vaughan, a grammar school pupil who had achieved four A* grades in his A-levels, was arrested at his family home in June 2019 in a counter-terrorism investigation into Fascist Forge, an online forum used by extreme rightwing militants.
In an application to join the System Resistance Network – an alias of the banned neo-Nazi group National Action – in March 2018, he wrote: “I could handle myself in a fight. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to further the cause.”
Police found 4,200 images and 302 files, including an extreme rightwing terrorist book and documents relating to Satanism, neo-Nazism and antisemitism, on his computer and other devices.
Detectives also discovered graphics encouraging acts of terrorism in the name of the proscribed organisation Sonnenkrieg Division and footage of the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre.
One featured the Norwegian far-right killer Anders Breivik and the words “every girl loves a mass murderer” and “it’s okay to be a Nazi”.
Vaughan had originally pleaded guilty to one count of encouragement of terrorism, one count of disseminating a terrorist publication, 12 counts of possessing a document containing information of a kind likely to be of use to a person preparing or committing an act of terrorism, and two counts of making an indecent photograph of a child.
Speaking about Thursday’s sentence, DCS Gareth Rees of the Met police counter-terrorism command, said: “Blake had been convicted of offences relating to sharing extremist content online, so restrictions were imposed to curb his access to computer systems.
“His breach of these conditions was extremely serious. Not only had he breached the conditions, but we uncovered that he had also been storing child abuse images.
“I hope this case sends the message that we closely monitor people who are under terrorism notification and crime prevention orders, and that we will bring them back to court where we’ve found they’ve broken those conditions.”
• This article was amended on 4 August 2023 to clarify that Harry Vaughan was convicted of terrorism offences in 2020; not of satanism, as an earlier version implied.
