A MAN who downloaded tens of thousands of indecent images of children has been spared jail.

Paul Standen, 38, of Lane Farm, Warpsgrove Lane, Chalgrove, admitted three charges of downloading indecent images of children while living at a house in Temple Road, Oxford.

He was one of three men arrested in a raid at the house on September 15 last year.

Officers seized two computers belonging to Standen and found a combined total of 160,000 images of children as young as five.

Standen was charged with making 1,463 images on August 22, 2009, making 27,550 images between March 1 and June 30 last year on one computer and 29,276 on the other for the same time period.

He appeared at Oxford Crown Court on Monday. Joanna Durber , prosecuting, said: “These were not images that had been viewed and deleted. They were actually saved on the computer in sub-categorised folders.”

Titles included ‘cute girl 9-10’ and ‘bambi 11-12’.

Police did not check every single image downloaded, and the charges relate to the images and movies assessed and categorised.

Indecent material involving children is rated one to five, with five being the most serious. On the first computer there were 160 level one movies, two level two movies, seven level two stills and eight level three stills and the rest were level one still images.

On the second computer all were level one stills apart from four level two images and two level threes.

Julian Lynch, defending, said: “The reason he got into downloading these images is that, having taken up residence with the other offenders who were already interested in that sort of material, it simply normalised in the household that sort of image being downloaded and looked at.”

Judge Ian Pringle gave Standen a 12-month community order and ordered him to carry out 80 hours unpaid work.

He was also made subject of a sexual offences prevention order, which bans him from using any computer or Internet device which does not keep a history and orders him to inform his public protection officer if he obtains any new devices.

Judge Pringle said: “I am told that you are embarrassed by what you did over the last year or two and rightly you should be. Embarrassment is probably too light a word.

“What you do by accessing even level one images of young children is you create a market for it.

“Your appetite was voracious – you had something in the region of 75,000 images of young children on your computer.”

He added: “The court marks these offences quite often by custodial sentences and I would be quite justified to pass one in this case.

“Because of your previous history, because of the plea of guilty you have entered and because of what I have read about you in the report, I am prepared to follow its recommendation and order a community order in your case.”

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said it was impossible to say if the number of images found on Standen’s two computers was a record.