Leamington computer programmer downloaded child porn images

Warwickshire Justice Centre in Leamington, where Warwick Crown Court sits

James Watson, of Avenue Road, Leamington, at the time, also had images of extreme pornography involving dogs, a judge at Warwick Crown Court has heard.

The 44-year-old pleaded guilty to 15 offences of making indecent images of children and possessing extreme porn.

He was sentenced to eight months in prison suspended for two years, with supervision for the whole period, and was ordered to take part in a sex offender treatment programme.

Recorder Martin Hurst also made him subject to a sexual offences prevention order and ordered him to register as a sex offender for five years.

Prosecutor Mark Phillips said that in June last year police officers acting on information they had received went to Watson’s home in Avenue Road.

They told him they had reason to believe he had indecent images, and he immediately said they would find them on both his computer tower and on his laptop, which were seized.

When they were examined, officers found 147 still images of children and 182 movies classed as being in Category A.

Mr Phillips said there were 173 stills and 13 movies in Category B, and 761 stills and four movies in Category C.

But there were also six stills and four movies of ‘extreme porn,’ which the court heard all involved dogs.

Jamie Strong, defending, said Watson, who was said to suffer from an autistic spectrum disorder which had contributed to his behaviour, works as a computer programmer earning £30,000 a year.

Sentencing Watson, who has since moved to Gloucester, Recorder Hurst told him: “I am sure you are bitterly ashamed and embarrassed to be here.

“The court has sympathy for you and your condition; but what you have been doing is illegal and wrong, and very damaging for the children you look at. It is only because you look at those images that they are made. Think of what you are looking at. They are real children and real men.”

“It is disgusting, and you have got to stop.

“But the way to make people like you stop is, in the first instance, treatment rather than prison.”