A Needham Market man who downloaded more than 1,000 indecent images and videos of children as young as two had been given a suspended prison sentence.

Police who searched 48-year-old James Osborn’s home in February last year seized a mobile phone, a laptop and a hard drive, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

When the equipment was analysed it was found to contain 228 indecent images and 72 videos in the most serious level A category, 284 images and 16 videos in category B and 501 images and four movies in the lowest level C category.

Mark Halsey, prosecuting, said that male and female children aged between two and 15 featured in the indecent images and videos which Osborn had accessed between 2014 and 2022.

Osborn, of Foxglove Avenue, Needham Market, admitted three offences of making indecent images of children and two offences of possessing extreme pornographic images.

He was given a 12-month prison sentence that was suspended for two years, a 30-day rehabilitation activity requirement, a 100 day alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement and 180 hours of unpaid work.

He was also given a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years and ordered to sign the sex offenders register for the same period.

Sentencing Osborn, Judge Emma Peters said that people like him fuelled the trade in indecent images which ruined children’s lives.

“If you didn’t download these images there would be no need for such a trade and it would die out and children would be protected,” said the judge.

The court that Osborn, who has no previous convictions, had started viewing the indecent images of children before the Covid lockdowns but it had increased during the pandemic at a time when he was drinking too much.

He was now three months sober and had sought help from the Lucy Faithfull organisation to help prevent him reoffending.