A Dunkeswell pensioner who searched for and downloaded images of girls as young as four being abused has been sent on a sex offenders’ course.

Ex-soldier Esmond Collins was caught with the images when police raided his home.

Collins has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of experiences he had while serving in the forces.

A probation report said he may have sought out the abuse images as a result of being desensitised by what he witnessed as a soldier.

 Collins claimed he had either been hacked or framed, or that images and search terms found on his devices had migrated there from online cloud storage areas.

 He said he had used the same log-in details for all his online accounts since he was in the army and that anyone who has known him in that time could access them.

He was found guilty at a trial at Exeter Crown Court before Christmas after a digital forensic expert rejected his explanations as being impossible or extremely unlikely.

Collins, aged 70, of Blossom Close, Dunkeswell, denied three counts of making, by downloading, indecent images of children, but was found guilty.

He was jailed for 18 months suspended for two years and ordered to attend a 40-session sex offenders’ treatment course by Judge Anna Richardson.

He was also put on the sex offenders’ register for ten years and made subject of a Sexual Sexual Harm Prevention Order which enables police to monitor his online activity

During the trial, Mr Rowan Jenkins, prosecuting, said the case arose out of a police raid at Collins’s home in October 2020, in which two devices were seized.

They were analysed and images and search terms were found. Experts recovered  a total of 74 images at the highest level A, depicting penetrative activity with children, 71 in category B, and 83 in category C.

Collins said he was a former corporal in the army who had served in Cyprus and the first Gulf War.

He said he has no sexual interest in children, has never searched for or downloaded child images and could not explain how they got onto his phone and tablet.

Miss Althea Brooks, defending, said immediate imprisonment would cause suffering to Collins’s wife, who has suspected early-onset dementia, and he had been assessed as a good prospect for rehabilitation.