A Burnham-On-Sea man who stored dozens of child porn images and videos on his computer has escaped a prison term after appearing in court.
Steven Payton, 52, had the graphic images on a laptop computer at his Burnham home.
During the hearing at Taunton Crown Court, he admitted seven counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing indecent images of children.
He received a three-year community order, was ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for five years, must attend a sex offenders’ programme and must also pay costs of £340 and a £60 surcharge.
Prosecuting, Rebecca Bradberry told the court that when the laptop was seized, Mr Payton told officers the images had been sent to him “when he was winding people up” on online chat rooms and he had deleted them.
The court heard there were around 7,000 chat logs on the laptop as well as 32 indecent images, eight movies, three prohibited movies and one extreme movie dating back to November-December 2011.
Defending, Lee Bremridge said his client was of “previous good character” and asked for his early guilty plea to be taken into consideration by the judge.
“Although serious offences, the number of images and movies in the context of these sort of cases is low. They expert who analysed the computer said there was no evidence of him distributing images to others,” he said.
