A HOSPITAL IT officer amassed three-quarters of a million indecent images of children and used his computer skills to avoid justice.

Martin Richard Shepherd, 45, went undetected for so many years because his expertise enabled him to encrypt the stash of vile images, York Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Stephanie Hancock said Shepherd, who worked in the IT department at Harrogate District Hospital for 22 years, trawled the dark web for images of child-sex abuse from May 2002 to the time of his arrest last June.

He also spied on naked and barely-dressed teenagers at a property in Harrogate after setting up covert video equipment.

Shepherd, described as a loner, was finally caught after cyber-crime detectives traced illegal downloads to his computer IP address.

Analysis of his computer equipment showed he had a “massive library collection” of photos and videos featuring serious sexual abuse of “very young” children including 12-month-old babies and youngsters who had been drugged or plied with alcohol.

Of the 748,000 illegal images found stored on his equipment, just under 9,000 photos and videos were rated Category A - depicting the worst kind of child sex abuse.

Jailing Shepherd for five years, Judge Paul Batty QC told him: “This is the worst case of its type that I have had to deal with in a long time in the law.”

“It represents the actual manifestation of abuse of little children on an extraordinary scale. For some 14 years or more, you were involved in this loathsome activity (and) you were viewing this material for hour upon hour.

“Some of the children who were depicted were babes-in-arms being abused in the vilest of ways, and some of the children were plainly drugged or had been fed alcohol.

“The charges that you admit are but a snapshot of what the police were able to view."

He said police resources could not justify fully detailing all he had amassed over the years.

Ms Hancock said Shepherd’s collection was just a “snapshot” of the vile images he had amassed over the years.

The barrister said Shepherd had painstakingly catalogued the images in 22 encrypted volumes and used an “extremely-complex” system of passwords to hide them. Other images were deleted.

York Press:

Shepherd, who has never had an intimate adult relationship, also distributed at least 19 depraved videos, 17 of which were in the most serious category, on a file-sharing site where paedophiles could exchange images.

She said: “The defendant admitted he used the dark web and [an anonymous browser] which makes it impossible to trace the internet use or [search] history,” added Ms Hancock.

“As a computer expert, he knew that it would not leave a forensic footprint of the searches that he was carrying out and his IP address could not be traced.”

Shepherd appeared to have let his guard down after 14 years of undetected internet activity, when police were finally able to trace some of the vile downloads to his computer using the national database.

Shepherd, of Chatsworth Grove, Harrogate, was charged with making and distributing child pornography, as well as gaining unauthorised access to private computer files at Harrogate Hospital.

He admitted these charges as well as two counts of voyeurism related to separate incidents in which he had set up webcams to take video footage of two female teenagers getting undressed in 2005 and 2012.

Shepherd saved 240 still and moving images from the webcam onto his computer, before editing the footage and placing some into a sub-folder.

Shepherd sat sobbing, with his head bowed, when he appeared for sentence on Tuesday.

For him, Nicholas Rooke said he was “deeply ashamed, remorseful and embarrassed”.

He said Shepherd had resigned from his hospital IT post as soon as he was charged with the offences.

Shepherd was also placed on the sex-offenders’ register for life and subjected to a sexual-harm prevention order, which will restrict his internet use and prevent him deleting files.