A FATHER-OF-FOUR has been jailed for two years after he was caught with thousands of images of child pornography on his computers.

Nicholas Spence had also stored the pictures he had downloaded from the internet on CD Rom discs found at his Park South home.

The 37-year-old house husband was caught after the paedophile unit at Scotland Yard traced him downloading child pornography.

Prosecutor George Threlfall told Swindon Crown Court that the police raided his home in Grantley Close on July 1 last year.

When officers told him why they were there he replied "I'm sorry. I know I have made a mistake. It's all on the hard drive."

As well as taking two computers, Mr Threlfall said police also seized a number of CD Roms, DVD discs and videos for examination.

After searching all of seized material, police found 3,847 indecent images of children stored on the two computers and CD Roms.

When he was questioned, Spence told police that he had accessed the pictures and movies through file-sharing software and kept them on his hard drive.

"He said that the indecent images ranged from eight-year-olds to 16-year-olds and depicted sexual activity with adults," Mr Threlfall said.

Thirty-six of the images were categorised as the most serious level 5 while about 700 were level 4.

Spence, who gave the court an address in County Road, pleaded guilty to 16 counts of making indecent images and one of possessing them.

Robert Pawson, defending, told the court that since he was arrested his client had not been able to live at home and had not seen his wife.

Because of what had happened, he said Spence had only seen his children under supervision by the social services while awaiting sentence.

"It is hard to imagine an easier way of destroying one's life than downloading some of these ghastly images from the internet," he said.

Mr Pawson said that his client accepted he faced a prison term.

But he hoped he could be offered help when he was released in the form of a sexual offenders' programme.

Jailing him, Judge Charles Wade said "There is little doubt you developed an obsessive interest over a number of years with a particular interest in pubescent girls."

As well as imposing a two-year sentence, he said that he would extend the licence afterwards by a further three years and ban him from working with children.

He also ordered that Spence should register as a sex offender for ten years

And he imposed a sexual offences prevention order for the same period to restrict his liberty.

The order bans Spance from taking photos or video images of children, doing any work, either paid or voluntary, which would leave him alone with anyone under 18.

It also bans him from using chat rooms, file sharing software or accessing porn sites on the internet.

Spence's computers, CD Roms and DVD discs will also be destroyed.

Jamie Hill