Malcom Corbett 55

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A Nottingham paedophile caught with more than 1,000 vile child abuse images was told by a judge the young people he was getting sexual pleasure from viewing were sentenced to “a living death”.

Malcom Corbett also exchanged sex messages with a 13-year-old girl telling her “it’s a shame the law does not take into account people’s emotions”.

But Poppy, the teen the 55-year-old thought he was engaging in disgusting and illegal chats with, was really a decoy. And when the police went to arrest the defendant and his then West Bridgford flat, they found 600 of the most serious category A child sex pictures and videos.

Handing him an 18-month jail term, suspended for two years, at Nottingham Crown Court, Judge Stuart Rafferty said: "You should be ashamed of yourself. A man of your age propositioning girls, who you believed were real girls, aged 13, is simply outrageous.

“Yes, you are disabled, yes, you are lonely, yes, you have too much time on your hands and yes, you don’t get on with the people you were living with but you were living a fantasy. You amassed over 1,000 indecent pictures of children and if you bothered to look at the faces on those photos you would see fear, sadness and misery.

“Because every one of these children you were looking at was a real person and every one of them will never be a whole person again because of you and people like you. These children will never be whole again, they can’t be because their innocence has been taken away from them.

“Their privacy has been taken away from them and their soul has been taken away from them. They have been sentenced to a living death.

“But if I send you to prison all you will do is sit in your cell feeling sorry for yourself thinking you have not done anything wrong. Don't you dare come back before me again and don’t you dare spend another minute not being ashamed of what you did.”

Gareth Gimson, prosecuting, said Corbett used two social media applications to chat online to Poppy, who the defendant believed was a 13-year-old girl. The prosecutor said in messages he told her he “loved younger girls” asked her to send him pictures of herself and when the decoy did, he told he she “looked gorgeous”.

Mr Gimson said: “He said in one message ‘it’s a shame the law does not take into account people’s emotions’. He asked if she had a PayPal account, and the reason for that is that he told her he could ‘send her a little money’.

“He sent pictures and a video of himself lying on his bed.” The prosecutor said the police were alerted to what was happening and went to his then address in Greythorn Drive.

Mr Gimson said a phone was examined and found to contain 600 of the most serious category A child abuse images, 432 category B and 160 category C. He said there were internet search terms including “young girl nudism” and “teen underwear”.

Corbett, now of Mansfield Road, Blidworth, Mansfield, pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and three counts of making indecent images of children. He has no previous convictions.

Raglan Ashton, mitigating, said his client “would very much take advantage of the help and the support the probation service can offer him”.

As part of the suspended sentence order, the judge ordered the defendant to attend 35 rehabilitation sessions with the probation service, placed him on the sex offender register for five years and handed him a five-year sexual harm prevention order.