A PAEDOPHILE who trawled the internet for child abuse films after searching by using keywords like ‘Lolita’ installed a data cleaning programme to cover his tracks.

Stephen Smith, 64, of The Uplands, Rogerstone, Newport, had also downloaded more than 700 bestiality images showing women having sex with animals.

After police raided his home in December 2020, the defendant told officers he was ‘hooked on pornography’.

Emma Harris, prosecuting, said: “He told them he had an addiction to pornography and would spend four or five days a week looking at it for between one and two hours.”

Smith claimed he had stumbled upon the child abuse images as pop-ups while searching for BDSM material.

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When speaking about the bestiality images he had downloaded, he told detectives he didn’t realise they were illegal and he thought of them as a “joke”.

Smith pleaded guilty to possession of two category A and one category B images.

He also admitted possession of 714 extreme pornographic images.

Suzanne Payne, mitigating, said: “Mr Smith is full of remorse and he is disgusted with himself and the shame of his actions and its impact on his family.”

She asked the court to take into account her client’s previous good character with no previous convictions recorded against him.

Mrs Payne added the defendant had been in a “world of pornography” and was now “wracked with guilt”.

Judge Nicola Saffman told Smith: “You had carried out a search using key words such as Lolita.

“There was file sharing peer-to-peer installed on your devices to enable peer-to-peer sharing of images.

“You installed a data cleaning programme and used this to remove and clean the images which you had downloaded.

“You spoke at great length to the police about your addiction to pornography but you minimised, in my judgement, what had happened in relation to the images of children."

Judge Saffman added: “There is no hiding place for those who seek out and download indecent images of children.

“There are not victimless crimes. For these images to be prepared, children are abused and sometimes tortured.

“These are real children.”

Smith was jailed for 15 months, suspended for 18 months.

He must complete a 40-day rehabilitation activity requirement and pay £720 prosecution costs and a £156 victim surcharge.

The defendant must register as a sex offender for 10 years and was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order until 2032.