Racist, homophobic neo-Nazi terrorist spared jail after pleading guilty to sharing bomb manuals and downloading child sexual abuse videos
Harry Vaughan, 18, was given a two-year suspended sentence for 14 terror offences and two sex offences. (Metropolitan Police)
A racist and homophobic neo-Nazi terrorist who posted bomb-making manuals on a fascist forum and downloaded sexual abuse videos of young boys has been spared jail.
Harry Vaughan, an 18-year-old student from south west London, was arrested in June 2019 after police conducted a counter-terror investigation into a forum called Fascist Forge.
According to The Guardian, he created his own far-right propaganda posters and posted them online.
The content he shared included graphic depictions of violence, homophobic comments, bomb-making manuals and a guide to killing people. Vaughan also boasted about school shootings and had downloaded indecent videos of underage boys.
Police found 4,200 images and 302 files on his devices including an extreme right-wing terrorist book as well as neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic documents.
In his “Fascist Forge” profile he described himself as an “extremist”, and when he was arrested police found several homemade posters in his bedroom including one that featured far-right terrorist Anders Breivik with the words “every girl loves a mass murderer” and “it’s okay to be a Nazi”.
In an application to join System Resistance Network, an alias of the proscribed neo-Nazi organisation National Action, Vaughan wrote: “I could handle myself in a fight. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to further the cause.”
Harry Vaughan plead guilty to terror and child sexual abuse video charges.
On September 2, Harry Vaughan pleaded guilty to one count of encouragement of terrorism, one count of disseminating a terrorist publication, 12 counts of possessing a document useful for terrorism and two counts of making an indecent photograph of a child.
Yet at his sentencing Monday (November 2), he was spared jail.
At the Old Bailey, Vaughn – the son of House of Lords clerk Jake Vaughan – was sentenced to two years’ detention suspended for two years, a ten-year terrorist offender notification order and was ordered to attend a number of programmes including for de-radicalisation.
Prosecuting, Dan Pawson-Pounds said: “It is clear that a large quantity and variety of material was seized as part of the investigation.
“The material demonstrated unequivocally that Mr Vaughan had an entrenched right wing, extremist and racist mindset.
“He also demonstrated an interest in the occult and satanism.”
Naeem Mian QC, representing Vaughan, told the court that a “toxic cocktail of factors” had led the student to “disappear down a rabbit hole of the internet” into a “very, very dark place”.
The judge, justice Sweeney, said he had taken into account the defendant’s recent diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), his age, and assurances from Vaughan’s parents that they would help him “change for the better”. Vaughan insisted he had now denounced his racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi beliefs.
Sweeney told Vaughan: “[Your barrister] submits your sexual offences were the product of your being confused about your sexuality and that you now have more insight.”
The judge said Vaughan had told an expert that his sexual offences happened because of “curiosity and sexual excitement”. The expert concluded that the 18-year-old was a “dangerous offender”, but that “immediate custodial sentence may increase [his] vulnerability”.
