A 38-year-old offender has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for the possession and distribution of indecent images of children.

Daniel Paul Ashenden previously admitted downloading 79,294 indecent images, pleading guilty to 11 counts of possessing images, and one of distributing them.

He will serve half of the 16 months in custody, and the other half out on licence.

Last September, police executed a search warrant at Ashenden’s home at The Crescent in Ramsey, and after the seizure of nine devices the images found were processed by the force’s digital evidence unit.

Though making immediate guilty pleas, Mr Ashenden initially argued that he had no sexual attraction to children and had not viewed the images, saying that downloading them had become a habit, and possessing them on his device had ‘made him feel naughty’.

Deemster Graeme Cook called this argument ‘rubbish’.

Defence advocate Jane Grey said that Mr Ashenden ‘at the time didn’t realise the gravity and impact of the images on children’, and he had since come to realise the seriousness of the offence.

The images were downloaded over a period spanning back to July 2018.

Indecent images are categorised using the Copine scale, which is used to measure the severity of an image from one to five, with five being the most severe category.

Prosecuting advocate Roger Kane said that 1,500 still images and 7,000 moving images had been assessed at level four.

Forty-seven still images and 19 moving images were categorised as level five.

He had distributed a number of images between one to three on the scale.

Psychological reports found that Mr Ashenden had major depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and autism spectrum disorder.

Deemster Cook told Mr Ashenden that a social inquiry report had found that ‘you were reluctant to accept what you were doing’.

He added: ‘People like you who appear in the dock for this kind of offence should expect very little mercy, because of the impact of these images on children’.

Mr Ashenden will also be placed on the sex offenders’ register for ten years, and subject to a sexual offences prevention order.

This order conditions a range of restrictions, such as not being able to delete browsing history on devices, purchase devices without notifying the authorities, or use public wifi.

He must also pay £500 prosecution costs, and forfeit the nine devices to be destroyed.