A NEW FOREST man who collected sordid images of children has been spared an immediate prison sentence after a judge accepted he had been seeking help for his problem before his arrest.

Daniel Hicks was detained after police had been alerted by CEOP, the children exploitation and online protection centre.

Prosecutor Eleanor Fargin told Southampton Crown Court how police seized his computer and Iphone and discovered more than 500 sexual images on the former.

She said there were more than 90,000 images on the computer in total including a significant number involving babies and toddlers wearing nappies or naked.

Hicks, 29, of Stopples Lane, Hordle, pleaded guilty to eight charges of making indecent images and one of distributing one image. He received an eight-month suspended sentence incorporating an order to attend the Internet sex offenders treatment programme and two years’ supervision.

He was also banned from working with children and placed on the sex offenders register, both for ten years, and under the terms of a sex offenders prevention order, now has limited access to the Internet and cannot be left unsupervised with children.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Henry told Hicks: “You know how repulsive these images are. I hope you now realise what damage will have been done to those children.

“They are the real victims in this case. To read a description of the images is enough to turn a stomach.”

In mitigation, Timothy Akers said Hicks, who lost his job as a shop worker after his offending came to light, had admitted in a police interview how he had been sexually aroused looking at the images while under the influence of cannabis and cocaine.

“He got himself into a vicious cycle. He was feeling guilty after taking drugs and looking at the images which led him to consuming more drugs which ended up with him looking at more images.”

Mr Akers said Hicks – who was of previous good character – had not looked at the images when sober and he was now clean of drugs.