A MAN who trawled the dark web to collect more than 100,000 videos and photos of youngsters being sexually abused has been jailed.

John Gary Walton’s computer was distributing illegal images over the internet as police walked into his home in Tudor Road, Acomb, on August 30, said Simon Waley, prosecuting at York Crown Court.

His enormous illegal store included videos of a baby aged about six to eight months being sexually assaulted and a girl aged eight or nine tied up with cord suffering a serious sexual assault, plus 276 more videos of the worst kind of abuse.

York Crown Court heard Walton, 51, had searched the dark web for similar images.

For him, Victoria Smith-Swain said of his crimes: “He asserts it was not for sexual gratification.”

He had downloaded the videos and pictures as a psychological reaction to the amphetamine he was taking.

Sharing the illegal images online had been accidental through peer-to-peer software and Walton had not intended to do so, she said.

But Judge Andrew Stubbs QC told Walton: “You have a very good knowledge of computer equipment, you knew your way around the internet and how to abuse it.

“You were using the dark web, you had scrubbing software installed on your computer to remove images without trace from the discs.

“Those who distribute on a large scale, as you did, must face a prison sentence and a long prison sentence at that.”

Walton pleaded guilty to three charges of distributing indecent images of children, three of possessing indecent images of children and one each of having prohibited images of children and of having extreme pornography featuring an adult.

He was jailed for 28 months, put on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years and made subject to controls on and police monitoring of his use of the internet under a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.

Mr Waley said police found 278 videos and 1,653 images of the worst kind of abuse, 82 videos and 2,377 images of mid category abuse and 98,565 images and 279 videos of the least serious form of abuse. He also had seven prohibited images and one extreme pornographic image.

Altogether, he had 103,232 videos and pictures of which 102,595 were sexual photos of children and 639 were sexual videos of children. Search terms on his computer indicated he had deliberately looked for similar images.

Police also found dirty children’s underwear hidden at Walton’s home.

Miss Smith-Swain said he had been taking drugs since he was 17 and had intended at some stage to remove all the images to prevent others in his household finding them. His imprisonment would impact on his ailing parents and other relatives.

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