A former physio was caught with a sickening collection of indecent images - including a video of a baby being abused which even he found upsetting.
Gavin Bettencourt downloaded hundreds of child abuse pictures and videos featuring children aged between one month old and 13 years. The material was found when police seized his phone in June 2020.
He was found to have more than 1,000 of the most serious, category A, images, more than 400 category B and more than 1,000 category C. He also had an extreme pornography video featuring a woman and a dog.
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When interviewed by police, Bettencourt admitted a sexual interest in prepubescent girls but said he found the videos of the baby and animals upsetting.
The 35-year-old, of Wiltshire Gardens, Wallsend, pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images, one of possessing extreme pornography and one of possessing prohibited images. Judge Edward Legard, at Newcastle Crown Court, sentenced him to ten months suspended for 18 months with a curfew and he must sign the sex offenders register and be subject to a sexual harm prevention order for ten years.
The judge told him: "These offences are not victimless crimes. Those who appear in these images are often young, highly vulnerable children like the one-month-old infant that was retrieved from one of your images.
"Some of those children are often recruited from impoverished backgrounds and are forced to perform degrading sexual acts or they are exploited or abused by others to feed the sexual gratification of people like yourself.
"You and many others like you are responsible for creating a market for this highly offensive material. The lives of the children can be, and often are, permanently scarred and it's people like you that bear responsibility for it."
Claire Anderson, defending, said: "He is a remorseful young man and that is genuine remorse. He understands the harm caused by his actions.
"He was of previous good character and is a well-educated man who went to Leeds University. He had mental health problems which led to things spiralling.
"He terminated working as a physio because of the impact on him and his patients. He became isolated and failed to take his medication.
"He is unable to leave the house due to severe anxiety. Today is the first time he has left the house for three or four months. He has agoraphobia."
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