A SEX BEAST who created a "vile" internet child porn service and attempted to rape a nine-month-old baby was jailed for 19 years today.

York Crown Court heard that David Lutz Ward's library of 25,754 still and moving images of child abuse were the worst ever seen by investigating officers.

They included sado-masochism, bondage, bestiality, child rape, and the post mortem of a child, said Nicholas Ralph, prosecuting.

There were also 61 encrypted still and moving pictures of Ward himself abusing a nine-month-old child, after her parents allowed him to babysit her.

Ward set out to be the "premier baby sex file server" on the internet, featuring abuse of children aged between nought and five.

Sentencing him to 19 years and putting him on the sex offenders register for life, Judge Paul Hoffman said of the pictures: "They are of the most vile and perverted nature and show the most foul crimes committed to babies."

Of Ward's own sex abuse of the child, he said: "It is hard to contemplate any sex crime more repugnant to the public or more likely to harm a young baby. This was horrendous abuse of the most disgusting nature."

The judge said that the baby was clearly crying and frightened during the two days of abuse.

Ward, aged 41, formerly of Merton Court, Acomb, pleaded guilty to 65 charges of distributing child porn, one of attempted rape, three of indecent assault, and two of taking child pornography pictures.

The judge said that had police not moved quickly and seized his sophisticated computer equipment, Ward would have continued his "vile" crimes.

Mr Ralph said that Detective Inspector Christoph Adler, of the German Federal Police, spotted Ward's activities when monitoring chat rooms. Ward later told police he ran eight chat rooms.

Det Insp Adler tipped off York Police, who raided Ward's home. They discovered that between March and May 2003, in one three-week period, Ward had sent out 33,486 images to 57 countries and on average he sent out 3,000 images a day, and received 600 in exchange per day.

Nicholas Barker, for Ward, said he got no commercial profit from his activities. He got technical satisfaction from using computers. The computers were on all the time. He had no previous sex convictions and his parents were standing by him.

In addition to the sentence, the judge made a sex offender prevention order, prohibiting him from using computers after his release, other than for legitimate employment.

Updated: 14:03 Friday, June 18, 2004