A CALDICOT man was jailed for having more than 13,000 pornographic images of children on his computer, some featuring girls thought to be as young as six.
Anthony Sanders, 62, was sentenced to 12 months in prison for the images, some in the worst class of abuse.
Sanders, of Mill Lane, was arrested after police received information from America he had subscribed to child porn websites.
Officers arrested him in December 2007, seized his computer and sent it for forensic analysis, revealing a total of 13,336 images on two hard drives on the computer.
Around 6,000 had already been deleted, leaving around 7,000 images, ranging from level one, such as naked young girls, to level five, images involving children in graphic or sadistic positions.
Sanders pleaded guilty to fifteen counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing indecent images of children between 2005 and 2007.
Ten counts were for level one images, one level two, one level three, two for level four and one level five.
The photographs showed young girls thought to be aged between six and 12.
In interview, he denied subscribing to the website, saying the images might be of girls as young as 14, but who were “physically mature.”
He later returned to police voluntarily, saying there might have been an occasion when drunk that he subscribed out of curiosity.
Leighton Hughes, defending, said there was no question of Sanders distributing the photographs, adding: “He’s otherwise a very lonely man with little or no experience of adult relationships.”
Sentencing, Judge Michael Burr said: “People in your position don’t always realise that each of these photographs was taken by somebody of a real child and demonstrate dreadful abuse.
“You had access to these images and therefore by your actions, encourage the whole process continuing this kind of abuse.”
Sanders was sentenced to six months for the level one images, eight months for the level three and 12 months for level four and five images, all to run concurrently.
He was disqualified from working with children, had to forfeit his computer and had to sign on the sex offenders register for ten years.
