A 20-YEAR-OLD man who admitted to police he has a “big problem” with looking at indecent images of children, is beginning a two-year spell in a youth offenders’ institution.

Andrew Sprudd was handed a community order and a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) last February after pleading guilty to a charge of making indecent photographs of children.

Little more than three months later however, he breached those orders.

Police executed a search warrant at his home in Bond Street, Newport, four weeks ago, and found 97 indecent images of children on his mobile phone.

At Newport Crown Court, Judge Jeremy Jenkins was told 13 of the images were in the most serious category A. Twenty-three were in category B, and 62 in category C.

Sprudd told police after his arrest that he had a “big problem with looking at such images,” said prosecuting counsel Stuart McLeese.

He added that Sprudd would delete downloaded images weekly, and had denied sharing images, but would talk about such things with like-minded individuals online.

Defence counsel Sarah Waters said Sprudd had “blown” the chance he had been given in February with the three-year community order.

As part of that Sprudd was ordered to take an offender behaviour course, but Miss Waters said it had not been set up by the time he was arrested again in May.

“He had been doing community service and had weekly visits with probation officers,” said Miss Waters, who added that Sprudd had been disowned by his father following his earlier offence, and had been living with his grandparents.

“He fell into his old ways, and accepts he has a problem with it,” she said.

Judge Jenkins told Sprudd he recognised that it was “through no fault of yours that because of the overburdened probation service, that course has not started.”

But he added that it was “inexcusable” that while waiting to go on the course, Sprudd had reoffended.

“It seems to me that the repeated offence is so serious that only a sentence of detention can be justified,” he said.

Sprudd was sentenced to 12 months in detention in relation to the category A images, with a further eight months and 14 weeks respectively for the category B and C images, to run concurrently.

He was given 12 months’ detention - to run consecutively - for breaching the community order. A new 10-year SHPO was also imposed.