A pornography addict has been sent on a sex treatment course after being caught with a vast library of child abuse images.
James Crowder amassed up to 190,000 images on his computers after becoming fascinated with different types of pornography during a holiday in Amsterdam 25 years ago.
He signed up to a peer to peer website where he was sent thousands of images by fellow paedophiles. He was caught red handed when police raided his home in Newton Abbot and found him looking at abuse on the internet.
Officers were able to take a screenshot of what he was watching and went on to find tens of thousands more images in his computers, Exeter Crown Court was told.
Crowder, aged 58, of Kittersley Drive, Newton Abbot, admitted 15 offences of making or possessing indecent or extreme images.
He was jailed for 20 months, suspended for two years and ordered to attend an internet sex offenders' treatment course by Judge Phillip Wassall.
He told him:"The probation reports says you are very likely to respond well to the sex offenders' programme and if you complete it, it will reduce the risk of re-offending to a minimum.
"You have admitted fully what you have done. You accept you have a problem and want to do something about it."
Miss Emily Pitts, prosecuting, said police executed a warrant at Crowder's home in April and found him using a peer to peer software package called e-mule.
She said:"Police found him downloading material on a computer and a screen shot was taken of what he was doing. He was using peer to peer file sharing software with temporary folders available for other users to access, upload and share.
"In his second interview he said he was a porn addict and thought the problem started in the 1980s when he went to Amsterdam when things like that were not illegal.
"He said if he found himself in a strange town he would hunt down sex shops."
The high tech crime unit did not have the resources to examine all the 190,000 files but looked at and categorised a tenth of them.
They found he had 5,418 stills and 61 movies at category A, the most serious which shows children suffering serious abuse, 7,196 stills and 20 movies at B, and 16,663 stills and six movies at the lowest category C.
There were also three extreme images and 300 prohibited images. The images were of children aged two to 13 and Crowder had used search words indicating an interest in boys and girls.
Mr William Parkhill, defending, said Crowder had been totally honest about what he had done and this recognition meant he was likely to be helped by a treatment programme.
He said:"He admits to having a problem and has already contacted an organisation called Stop it Now and is using their literature and has started to make progress on his own."
