A MAN with a decade-long addiction to watching sexual acts involving teenage underage girls is today on the sex offenders’ register and subject to controls on his use of the internet.

Police found more than 500 indecent videos and photographs of children on Ernest Teasdale’s computers and Blackberry when they raided his home on March 24, said Austin Newman, prosecuting.

They found 124 of the images and videos were on file sharing software that enabled others to access them, but there was no evidence he had sent them to anyone.

Teasdale, 35, of Camellia Close, Norton, pleaded guilty to three charges of possessing indecent images and videos of children and three of distributing sexual images and videos of children by not limiting access to the 124 pictures and videos on the file sharing equipment.

Mr Newman said Teasdale had told police he had downloaded the images for 10 years and was addicted to them, but he would never harm a child or carry out any of the acts in the videos and pictures.

Recorder Richard Wright QC told him: “Every time you view such an image, you are perpetuating the suffering of these children. Every image is the result of a child suffering sexual or physical abuse. Every time you view such an image, you fuel that industry, for that is what it is.”

He made a three-year community order at York Crown Court with 30 days’ rehabilitative activities including sex offender treatment and 250 hours’ unpaid work. He put him on the sex offenders’ register for five years and made a sexual harm prevention order restricting his use of the internet indefinitely.

His barrister Eleanor Fry said: “He feels it was almost a relief (to be caught) that this was now in the open and he could now seek assistance.”

Matters in Teasdale’s childhood could explain why he started viewing indecent images, she said. He had sought help from his GP and other organisations for his addiction and for depression.

Mr Newman said 215 of the videos and 18 of the pictures were of the most serious category, 98 videos and 23 pictures of the middle category and 59 videos and 157 pictures of the least serious category. Some of the images could not be accessed. Most featured girls aged between 12 and 15.