A paedophile, who downloaded
nearly 4,000 sickening sexually-explicit images of children, dodged
jail with a suspended sentence today.Retired Alistair Ledingham, 66, of Arthur Court, Charlotte Despard Avenue, Battersea was arrested after a police raid at the flat he shares.
Most of the images were of boys and depicted children as young as twelve months-old.
He pleaded guilty to ten charges of making indecent images of children ranging from Level One – the lowest - to Level Five – the highest on or before October 22, last year.
Ledingham was sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court (pictured) to ten months imprisonment, suspended for two years, and was placed on an eighteen-month community order, which includes a 'One to One' sex offender programme.
The court heard officers executed a search warrant at his address and in his bedroom two laptops, eight USB sticks and two discs were seized, which contained 3,889 images, including 101 video clips.
Most featured boys aged between ten and fifteen years-old, but 10% of the sexually-abused victims were under ten and some were girls.
Ledingham told police he had been viewing the material for four years after initially searching the internet for adult pornography.
The court was told the defendant, who has a thirty year-old gross indecency conviction, was “ashamed” of the offence.
There were 1,861 Level One images; 711 at Level Two; 347 at Level Three; 946 at Level Four and 24 at Level Five.
Ledingham will have to sign the sex offenders register and a Sexual Offences Prevention Order was made prohibiting him using the internet, without saving his searches, and he is banned from unsupervised contact with children aged under sixteen years-old.
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