John Humphreys 45

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A sex offender who traded videos and pictures of “misery, debauchery and child cruelty” has been jailed for 18 months.

Among the films of children being sexually abused that John Gary Humphreys sent to his online contacts was one of the rape of a toddler aged six to 18 months old, York Crown Court heard.

Lydia Carroll, prosecuting, said the 45-year-old complained in online chats about others shutting down access to their stock of indecent images of children.

Humphreys, of Coupland Road, Selby, pleaded guilty to three charges of distributing indecent images of children and three of possessing indecent images of children.

The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, told Humphreys he had taken part in a “filthy trade in misery, debauchery and child cruelty.

“You were passing on through the internet the most horrendous images of children.”

Comparing Humphreys to a drug dealer, the judge said he had to be jailed to deter others thinking of “pushing” similar images by putting them on the internet “where everyone could see them".

He jailed Humphreys for 18 months and made him subject to a sexual harm prevention order for five years. Humphreys will be on the sex offenders' register for 10 years.

Ms Carroll said police got a tip-off that Humphreys was uploading sexual images of children to the internet and raided his home in September 2023. He tried vainly to hide a mobile phone from them.

Forensic examination of his mobile revealed he had been downloading thousands of images from the Mega Folder cloud facility and trading illegal sexual images of children via Telegram as well as sending other people links.

The folders had names often used for sexual images of children.

Forensic investigators found Humphreys had uploaded 23 videos and five pictures of the worst category of sexual images of children via Telegram as well as 25 more videos and pictures of less serious categories.

He also had his own cache of nearly 4,000 images, 997 of which - including 83 videos - were in the worst category and more than 2,500 in the least serious category. All could be easily accessed. Police found 62,000 more images which they did not categorise.

For Humphreys, Sean Smith said since his arrest, he had undertaken an initial course with Safer Lives, an organisation that rehabilitates sex offenders, as well as having monthly meetings with its representatives.

He no longer used the internet and, for family reasons, now lived in a van where it was difficult for him to access the internet.

A medical report following an assessment in November 2023 suggested he may have autism and this may have contributed to his offending, among other causes which the barrister did not identify.

The judge accepted that Humphreys had worked to rehabilitate himself and was “ordinarily a decent man”.