Robert Quinlan was found to have 189 indecent images and movies on a number of devices after he was arrested on 21 April following a search of his flat by the police.
He told officers that one of the hard drives ‘may have stuff on it’.
The 46-year-old pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing indecent images of children and two counts of making indecent photographs of children.
On Friday he was sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Royal Court and was told that he would be on the Sex Offender Register for three years.
Outlining the case, Crown Advocate Conrad Yates, prosecuting, said that before his arrest, Quinlan had said to his partner: ‘I may have downloaded stuff I shouldn’t have.
‘It’s not threatening to our children, any children.’
During a search of Quinlan’s flat, the police seized a number of devices which contained images and movies of children as young as 12, the court was told.
However, during interview, the defendant denied having any sexual interest in children and said that most of the videos on his devices were of adults.
Quinlan, the court heard, had been using a peer-to-peer sharing programme to access the indecent material.
The court was also told that while on bail, Quinlan, who is originally from Norfolk, suggested to his brother-in-law that a computer tower belonging to him, which was being stored in his brother-in-law’s loft, may contain evidence in relation to his arrest.
The defendant’s brother-in-law contacted the police, but during a search of the loft they discovered that the tower had been removed.
It was found at the defendant’s flat the following week with all its internal components stripped out, which police believed was an attempt to destroy the device, according to the Crown Advocate.
However, the court accepted that Quinlan had taken the computer tower while collecting his belongings from his brother-in-law’s house, where he had been living for a short time, and that he had not removed the components to destroy the tower, otherwise he would not have left behind the hard drive, which contained 47 indecent images of children.
Advocate Sarah Dale, defending, said that her client had had no previous convictions.
‘His searching was part of a more general addiction to pornographic images.
‘He wasn’t specifically seeking pictures of children,’ she said.
‘He has no sexual interest in under-age people and should not be considered a paedophile, and he accepts that it was always a risk that some of the material would be of young children.’
Advocate Dale added that Quinlan knew he needed help but could only access support after entering a guilty plea to the charges.
He had previously asked for his GP to refer him for help, but he was told that help was accessible only via the Probation Service.
Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, presiding, said that the letter Quinlan had written to the court to express his remorse was ‘one of the best’ that one of the Jurats had ever read.
However he said that the court believed that there were no exceptional circumstances for a non-custodial sentence.
The commissioner was sitting with Jurats Geoffrey Fisher and Tony Olsen.
