A pervert who downloaded thousands of child abuse images using search terms such as “death porn” has been jailed for 14 months.

Dean Ditton was told that nothing less than a custodial sentence could be justified for the “horrific” photographs and movie clips depicting babies and very young children in “discernible pain and suffering”.

Ditton, 59, of Hamond Hill, Chatham, admitted possessing 2,904 still images and 380 moving images. They covered all levels of seriousness, with 905 stills and 254 movies rated in the highest category.

The father-of-two also pleaded guilty to possession of extreme pornographic images portraying someone having sex with an animal.

The offences were committed on July 2 last year.

Prosecutor Abigail Husbands told Maidstone Crown Court the images had been saved in various files with names such as ‘paedo pics’ and ‘kids’, as well as in what appeared on the face of it to be a tax folder.

"These are horrific images of sexual abuse of babies as well as very young children..." - Judge Michael Carroll

She added that analysis of the laptop revealed many search terms. As well as ‘death porn’ and ‘dark porn’ there were also references to ‘abuse of mentally retarded’, ‘pre-teen models’ and ‘strangling and choking her’.

Following his arrest Ditton told police he had seen the child abuse images while browsing for porn on the internet.

“He said some of the search terms had been suggested to him by the search engine,” Miss Husbands said. “He also stated he had been sent some images by an individual he met in a chatroom.”

Danny Moore, defending, said Ditton’s offending had “snowballed” but he had been frank with police when he was interviewed and shown remorse.

He also told the court Ditton has a cancerous growth on his lung which requires surgery.

But Judge Michael Carroll said nothing but prison could be imposed despite his previous good character and poor health.

“These represent serious sexual child abuse. Just because it’s on the screen doesn’t mean it wasn’t created by serious sexually abusing a child, and those people wouldn’t create it if they didn’t think there were similar-minded people out there wanting to share it,” he added.

“These are horrific images of sexual abuse of babies as well as very young children.”

Ditton must sign on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years and be subject to an indefinite order limiting his use of devices with access to the internet.

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