SOFTWARE engineer Wayne Baron, 47, viewed obscene videos and photographs of boys, some of whom were bound and gagged, a court was told on Friday.

When police raided Baron's home at Brockley Acres, Eastcombe, he was candid about what he had been doing and showed officers which computers the illegal images were on.

“There were 57 hours of Category A videos showing boys aged 7-17 involved in sexual activity, some bound and gagged and showing signs of distress,” said prosecutor Tara Wolfe at Gloucester Crown Court.

“Baron also had five and a half hours of indecent Category B video of boys aged 2-17,” she said.

Baron pleaded guilty to possessing 281 Category A videos and stills, 76 Category B and 26 Category C on April 12 this year.

He was sentenced to nine months in jail suspended for two years and placed under supervision for a year.

Recorder Paul Grumbar also ordered him to pay £500 prosecution costs and placed him under a sexual harm prevention order for ten years.

Baron will be on the sex offender register for seven years.

The prosecutor told the court that police received a tip from the National Crime Agency in February that Baron's IP address had been downloading child porn through the peer to peer file sharing application Gnutella.

Officers went to his home at 6.30am on April 12 and spoke to the defendant and his partner.

Baron immediately said “I'm the one who's responsible.”

Ms Wolfe said: "He was very frank about how and where he had stored various images. He admitted he had sexual fantasies about boys aged 12-18. He recognised he had a problem and that it had got out of control."

Dermot Clarke, defending, said Baron had been in a relationship with his male partner for 21 years. The offences were triggered in about 2008 when his partner was ill and the intimacy between them dwindled, as did their social life.

"He became a lot more isolated. His partner eventually had a kidney transplant and then a brain infection. He is now totally unable to work and the defendant is his carer.

"He says that to de-stress he engaged in these activities. He says he has been battling with it for a long time."