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A disgraced retired teacher found with dozens of videos showing the worst kind of child abuse has been banned from the internet.
"Lonely old man" Aidan Broderick, 82, from Thanet, was discovered with 42 movies showing children as young as two being attacked.
KentOnline has decided not to detail the content, however, Judge Catherine Brown described the moving images as "appalling".
"These are not victimless crimes, all of these children were abused when these movies were created," she added.
"These were appalling images of young children."
The judge sentenced Broderick to 18-months custody, suspended for two years.
She also made him subject to the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years and a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO).
It means Broderick will be 92 when he is next able to use a device to legally access the web.
Canterbury Crown Court heard police were alerted to Broderick’s home in Burlington Place, Cliftonville, following reports of sinister activity on chatroom website ‘ChatStep’.
A total of 42 Category A movies and one Category A image surfaced following an interrogation of his computer.
Broderick also possessed 15 Category B and 1 Category C film alongside a Category B image.
Category A is the worst kind.
Specialist police software revealed 58 of the files had previously been deleted.
Prosecutor Ahmed Hossain said: “On August 20 2018 police became aware of activity in a chatroom called ChatStep.
“They went to his house, made a number of attempts to speak to him at that address but he was not there.
“It seems he had broken his neck after a fall on a bus and had become hospitalised for some time.”
The barrister added when officers traced the suspect he admitted using ChatStep, and so his computer was seized and analysed.
Mitigating, James Burke argued his client had enrolled on child abuse prevention course Stop It Now and was of previous good character.
“It has improved his insight and he has much more of an understanding of the impact the making of indecent images has on children," he said.
"He is a lonely old man who was justifying something to himself - something which cannot be justified..."
"He is a lonely old man who was justifying something to himself - something which cannot be justified."
It wasn't mentioned in court which school Broderick worked in before retirement, however, judge Brown highlighted there had never been reports of improper behaviour during his career.
Asked if he understood the conditions of his sentence Broderick, who carried a case to court, replied: "Yes I do."
Broderick pleaded guilty at a previous pre-trial hearing to three counts of making indecent photos, and two counts of possessing indecent images.
An NSPCC spokesperson said: “Many of the videos in Broderick’s collection are crime scenes, where children have been subjected to unthinkable exploitation.
“This is an industry where children are abused to order, and each time an indecent image is downloaded by an individual like Broderick the demand is only being fuelled.
“Law enforcement cannot solve this problem alone. Big tech must also be made to use their expertise and resources to quickly remove this terrible content from their platforms and identify who put it there in the first place.”
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