A BISHOP’S Stortford GP who was caught with 33 child pornography images of young boys may have viewed thousands more.

Dr Stuart Fitness, who worked at the South Street Surgery for 15 years, used encryption devices to prevent police from finding out how many sex abuse images he had downloaded – and kept his password secret.

The 53-year-old, of Knights Close, Buntingford, was arrested on September 2 last year.

Of the 33 images found on his computer, 16 were at level 3 and 11 at level 4. Child porn images are graded at levels 1 to 5, with 5 being the most serious.

At St Albans Crown Court on Friday (June 22), Judge John Plumstead said: “The defendant has not given his password and I regard what has been uncovered as only a glimpse of his activity. He ran a complex, sophisticated and multi-layered set of software.”

The titles of files had been recovered and these included “Raped, beaten and whipped”, which the judge said indicated subject matter at levels 4 and 5.

Graham Brown, defending, said that Fitness was “insistent” he had not deceived anybody by failing to give correct passwords to open the encryption details.

Sentencing him, Judge Plumstead said: “This man requires treatment for what is a perverse and distasteful interest in child pornography.

“If I send him to prison he will not be there long enough to receive treatment.”

He passed a three-year supervision order with a condition that Fitness attends a sex offender treatment programme. He must allow police to install public protection software on his computer and is not allowed to be in contact with a child under 16.

The judge told him: “By all accounts you have led a decent life. In a period of loneliness and depression you turned to a very dark form of stimulation.”

He told Fitness: “Set about reforming your life.” Fitness nodded.

Fitness must register as a sex offender indefinitely and pay £1,000 costs.