A COMPUTER technician who downloaded more than 21,000 child porn images, including one which a police officer described as “the worst she had seen”, has been jailed for three years.

Sentencing 23-year-old Daniel Lintott, Judge John Devaux said the image which the policewoman had described was “unspeakably vile”.

Lintott, of Lancaster Way, Claydon, had admitted 16 offences of making indecent images of children, one offence of possessing indecent images of children and one offence of distributing indecent images of children.

Ipswich Crown Court heard that of the 21,423 images and movies found on Lintott’s computer equipment, on a scale of one to five with level five being the most serious, around 400 were at level five.

In addition to jailing Lintott, Judge Devaux ordered him to sign on the Sex Offenders’ Register indefinitely and made him the subject of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.

Judge Devaux said an order banning him from working with children would also be imposed.

Robert Sadd, prosecuting, said police officers traced Lintott from his unique user number on a child abuse file sharing site and had seized computer equipment from his home.

He said that a policewoman described one of the level five images as the worst she had seen in her four years’ experience.

Mr Sadd said Lintott had used a French system to share images with like minded individuals but accepted he hadn’t done this for commercial gain.

Claire Hullock, for Lintott, said he had pleaded guilty to the offences at an early stage and despite answering no comment in his first police interview he had subsequently been co-operative and frank with officers about what he had done.

She said that after seeing the particularly nasty image the court had heard how Lintott had deleted it because he found it disgusting.

She said her client looked back at what he had done with “regret and remorse” and now had more understanding of the suffering of the people in the images he had viewed.

She told the court that Lintott worked as a computer technician.