A MARRIED Redditch man who had images of boys as young as two years old being raped was told by a judge he had fuelled child abuse.

Nicholas Langford, of Gaydon Close, had 16 images at category A, the most serious level, which contains images of penetrative sexual activity involving children.

He also had 61 images at category B and 380 at category C.

Langford, 49, made the images, found on an Asus and a Toshiba laptop, between January 1, 2010 and September 7, 2017.

At Worcester Crown Court on Thursday, he admitted three counts of making indecent photographs of children.

Christopher Lester, prosecuting, said police attended Langford's address and seized his computers after receiving an alert about suspicious chat room activity.

Officers asked if he had been involved in chat room activity with live indecent image streaming.

"He said 'yes', he had been in the chat room for sexual gratification and from time to time indecent videos had popped up. He would close it down and move to another part of the chat room," Mr Lester told the court.

But when his computers were examined and the indecent material was found, including the search terms used, he admitted the offences.

Search terms included '10-year-old boy undressed' and the words 'Lolita' and 'paedo'.

The images showed a boy estimated to be one to two years old being raped. Another showed a child aged between eight and 13, another was aged between seven and nine years old and another aged five to seven.

No evidence existed to show he had distributed the images.

Langford, a project co-ordinator, told a judge he had been married to his husband since 2015 but they had been together for 26 years.

He admitted he had a sexual interest in boys between the ages of 15 and 16 years.

Langford told the probation officer he may have committed the offences out of 'boredom' and would use gay chat rooms and web cam rooms.

The officer said: "He's ashamed and devastated by police entering his home and has had sleepless nights."

Judge Nicholas Cole said: "I accept you yourself were not involved in the physical abuse of children but those who watch and view such images fuel the demand for the creation of those images and therefore bear some responsibility for the actual abuse of young children."

He was sentenced to eight months suspended for 12 months and ordered to complete 35 rehabilitation activity requirement days.

A sexual harm prevention order was also made for 10 years restricting Langford's use of the internet and prohibiting him from deleting his search history. Devices must be made available for inspection upon request.

He must also notify police of any change of his address or name.

The judge also ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the computers which contained the indecent images.