A SEX offender linked his laptop to his television so he could watch "vile" abuse of children in large scale, York Crown Court heard.

David Barlow, 62, started searching online for sexual images of youngsters in 2014, said Matthew Collins, prosecuting.

In March 2020, a nationwide National Crimes Agency operation led North Yorkshire Police to his door.

They found images of children being subjected to the worst kind of abuse which had been downloaded using peer to peer software on his laptop.

Barlow, of Kingston Drive, Hambleton, near Selby, pleaded guilty to three charges of having indecent images of children.

"He's ruined his life," said Recorder Paul Reid and described the images as "utterly vile material".

Speaking directly to the sex offender, the judge said: "It is material depicting the abuse of children and using it and downloading it, particularly downloading it in the manner where it can be seen by others perpetuates and repeats that abuse.

"It is difficult to understand why a man of your age should start to access this sort of material. You probably don't understand it yourself.""

Barlow was given an eight-month prison sentence suspended for two years on condition he does a 90-day sex offender treatment programme and 30 days' rehabilitative activities.

He must also pay £180 prosecution costs.

Barlow was put on the sex offenders' register for 10 years and made subject to a 10-year sexual harm prevention order controlling how he accesses the internet and enabling police to monitor what he does online.

For Barlow, Caroline Abraham said he was remorseful and had taken steps of his own volition to deal with his problem.

He had completed an "intensive" Safer Lives programme for sex offenders, she said.

She gave no further mitigation after the judge said he would suspend the prison sentence.

Mr Collins said Barlow's arrest was part of a national crackdown on cyber crime.

Police stopped the sex offender in his car on March 3, 2020, and searched his house, where they found his laptop.

On it were two images of the worse kind of child sexual abuse, three images and two videos of the middle category and four of the least serious kind of abuse. The children in the images were aged nine to 12.

All the images had been viewed and deleted.

"The laptop had been linked into the living room television so that the video images could be observed in larger scale," said the prosecuting barrister.

There was also evidence that between 2014 and 2019 Barlow had been searching online for similar images and though what he had downloaded had been deleted, the file names indicated they were of child sexual abuse, said Mr Collins.