A Prestatyn man who was discovered with thousands of child abuse images he had built up over a four-year period has been sent to prison for eight months.

Police examined a laptop and hard drives belonging to Anthony Edwards and found sickening abuse images involving children as a couple of months old.

Edwards was found to be in possession of more than 1,800 category A videos and images, more than 1,300 category B videos and images and more than 21,000 videos and images in category C.

He had also downloaded 20 prohibited images and 80 extreme pornographic videos and still images.

Mold Crown Court heard there were also 968,000 images but because of the “sheer volume” of images police were unable to categorise them.

Edwards used bit torrent software to download the images and videos over a period of four years.

When he was arrested he accepted his responsibility for the data and material recovered from his computers.

Edwards, 39, of West Avenue, Prestatyn admitted five counts of making indecent images of children, one count of possession of indecent images of children and one count of possessing extreme pornography, with all the offences committed between 2014 and 2018.

Defence barrister Henry Hills said: “He has stopped looking at pornography after his arrest.

“He is the mainstay of his family and helps everybody. His wife has mental health problems and the fact that he will be deprived of his liberty will affect his family.”

Judge Niclas Parry told Edwards: “This offending is inexplicable as it is serious and I accept that it is a personal tragedy for you and your family.

“But there are certain offences in this category that can only lead to a custodial sentence. The aggravating features are the lengthy period of offending, the high number of images, including a high number of moving images, the age of the children who are being abused and the visible distress of those children.”

Edwards was placed under a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for 10 years and told to register as a sex offender for a similar period.