Birkenhead man held thousands of indecent images of children on his computer
A young Birkenhead man was found to have thousands of indecent images of children on his computer equipment, a court heard.
Police went to the home of Richard Burns in August 2012 after receiving information from Interpol about his IP address being used to access child abuse image sites.
Burns denied knowing anything about such images but after his computer tower, laptop and two hard drives were taken away and forensically analysed he was re-interviewed and admitted it, said Derek Jones, prosecuting.
25-year-old Burns, of Whitford Road, pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to three offences of downloading indecent images and possessing a total of 3,421 such images over the previous four years.
As well as photographs, they included movies.
Mr Jones said that Burns claimed that he had been looking for images of girls aged about 17 and 18 but the search names used indicated he had been searching for younger girls.
He had stored images in different folders though had deleted the majority.
Judge Clement Goldstone, QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, imposed a three-year community sentence with attendance on the stringent Northumbria Sex Offenders programme.
He also ordered him to sign the Sex Offenders Register for five years and imposed a ten year Sexual Offences Prevention Order.
Gerald Pachter, defending, said Burns has no previous convictions and has had the matter hanging over him for two years.
He had been co-operative with the police and was remorseful.
