A LONELY pensioner who retreated into a virtual world of hard-core child abuse has been jailed.

David Robert Griffith had never been in trouble with the police in nearly 70 years, but the videos and pictures on his computer were so appalling, Recorder Stuart Brown QC decided he had to lock him up for nine months.

"They are of the most disgusting kind," the judge said at York Crown Court. "They involved children of the youngest ages, they involved activities with male adults, they involved indications of a sado-masochistic kind. They may be few in number, but they are graphic in their nature."

He criticised the fact that there was no way sexual offenders on short sentences such as Griffiths could start treatment for their perversions in jail and continue once released. Griffith's barrister, Steven Grattage, had pleaded for the pensioner to be allowed to keep his liberty so he could undergo a lengthy sex offender treatment programme. But the judge said he had to be jailed.

Griffith, 69, of Main Street, Fulford, York, admitted 13 charges of possessing child porn, including baby porn.

He was also put on the sex offenders' register for ten years and banned from owning a computer or using the internet other than for legitimate reasons under supervision for the same period.

Prosecutor Alan Mitcheson said police found 38 pictures on Griffith's home computer hard drives, including nine at level four and one at level five, the highest categories of child porn. They also found videos including some at level five.

Detectives were tipped off after Griffith took his computer to be repaired.