A PORNOGRAPHY addict compiled 101,000 images which included ‘the grossest type’ of perverted child abuse.

Sam Lloyd spent months on end alone in his room smoking cannabis and trawling the internet for images of pre-teen children, and built up a massive library of pictures and videos.

He made much of his collection available to others by joining a peer-to-peer file sharing site where other users could access them.

Lloyd, aged 27, of Hamilton Drive, Newton Abbot, admitted making and possession of indecent images of children and was jailed for 16 months by Judge Phillip Wassall at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: ‘There were a massive number of images and you plainly had an interest in moving images. Your searching indicated an interest in young and pre-teen children having sex.

‘One search was for an aroused seven-year-old. If one thing shows the distorted level of your thinking, that is it.

‘You installed peer-to-peer software which enabled those who wanted to have access to your collection to be able to do so.

 ‘This court has to send a message that those do this with images of children being abused, sometimes in the grossest way, must receive an immediate custodial sentence.’

Miss Julia Coz, prosecuting, said Lloyd was identified through his internet address as having accessed images of children and found images on a number of devices.

The total number was around 101,000, mostly showing nudity or sexual posing, but 23 movies showed child rape and 10 more showed children taking part in sexual activity.

When interviewed, he told police he was ‘addicted to porn’ and developed an interest in child images after coming across them on the torrent file sharing site.

Mr Jeffrey Segan, mitigating, said Lloyd is not charged with distributing the images and had not knowingly done so.

He said at the time he was living away from home for the first time at a shared house in Brixham where he spent most of his time smoking cannabis and watching internet pornography.

He has now returned to live with his parents, reduced his cannabis intake, and taken an online course to address his addiction to pornography.