A SCHOOLS computer technician has been jailed today for running a child porn internet centre from his North Yorkshire bedroom for nearly a decade.

Oliver John Corbett’s hoard of nearly 63,000 photos and videos was the largest ever found by the county’s police and included nearly 600 hard-core images, said Simon Ostler, prosecuting at York Crown Court.

At least one of the children pictured was believed to be aged three to five years old.

His barrister, Steven Crossley, said Corbett, 25, nearly died after he fled his home and lived for a month in his car following the police raid on his bedroom where he spent most of his time.

Jailing Corbett for 32 months, Recorder Euan Duff said he had self-harmed himself. The images showed real children being sexually abused at a “dreadful level”.

The images continued to harm the victims because “these children are growing up and learning images of them are circulated worldwide.” He said: “This is manifestly offending of a very serious nature.”

Corbett, of Dishforth, was formerly employed at St Aidan’s C of E School, Harrogate, and a Boroughbridge school.

He pleaded guilty to ten offences of possessing child porn videos or pictures, nine of possessing child porn pictures or videos with intent to show to others, one of possessing 62,779 child porn images, one of possessing child porn images found on a camera, and one of possessing extreme pornography featuring adults. The earliest child porn image was downloaded from the internet in 2000.

He was put on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life and made subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Order for six years.

North Yorkshire education authority suspended him immediately after the police raid in September 2009, and he later resigned his post.

Mr Ostler said Corbett used file-sharing software to enable other internet users to view the child porn and left his computers on when at work.

Mr Crossley said he was an isolated person who used alcohol to lower his inhibitions and had never had a sexual relationship. Following the raid he was a “desperate man in a distressed state”, but was now taking counselling and accepted he had a problem. He was “sickened by what he has done”.

Three North Yorkshire Police officers spent four months sifting through six million images and the force seized 94 computer and other items from his house.

Sergeant Geoff Crocker, part of the investigating team said: “Corbett was an IT expert, the schools were presented with a clean cut and very talented young man with no previous convictions or history.

“The way the computers were set up and the storage of the information made it unlikely that his family would have discovered his collection.”

No children from either school was involved in any of the abuse, according to police.