David Mundy, a retired sound engineer, downloaded the horrific photos and videos over two decades.
A pensioner who collected tens of thousands of child sex abuse images over two decades has been jailed for 10 months.
Retired BBC sound engineer David Mundy, 85, downloaded more than 58,000 indecent images of children, mostly boys aged between six and 15, a court heard.
When caught, he told detectives the images ‘simply showed kids enjoying themselves’ and that he was only interested in ‘pleasure’.
Mundy’s offending was uncovered in a National Crime Agency sting launched when he attempted to download certain content in 2022.
Officers arrested him and searched his home in Esher, Surrey, finding 31 digital storage devices and 124 CDs containing child sex abuse images.
Some of the content had been organised into files, including some with titles suggested the victims had been categorised by nationality such as French & Czech.
He also kept a 15-page booklet containing keywords to help find certain movies and guides to using the dark web anonymously.
Mundy told officers he hadn’t yet tried to use the dark web and that he wasn’t sure what the definition of ‘abuse’ is.
He was charged the following year with three offences relating to the images and pleaded guilty.
The 85-year-old admitted to first looking at sexual images of children shortly before he retired in 1998.
The NCA’s Adam Priestley said: ‘Despite clear evidence showing the scale of his offending, and the horrific nature of the content he repeatedly accessed, Mundy told officers that the images he had saved simply showed kids enjoying themselves.
‘This could not be further from the truth. Behind each image is a vulnerable child who has been violated and abused for the benefit of offenders like Mundy.
‘We at the NCA are committed to protecting children and ensuring that individuals who collect this material, creating a demand for abuse content, are held to account.’
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