Man caught with 2,000 indecent images of children jailed

Peter Quirk was sentenced at Douglas Courthouse on Friday

A man who used the webcam on his laptop to covertly capture images of two young girls has been jailed for two years and eight months.

Peter Quirk, 76, was caught with more than 2,000 indecent images of children, including those of the girls, on a hard drive in his bedroom.

Douglas Courthouse heard he had installed software on his laptop which hid the history of his activity.

He was also placed on the sex offenders register for life.

The court heard police raided his home in Princes Road in Douglas on 27 July following information from the National Crime Agency.

Officers seized the hard drive, which was in a bedside drawer, along with a laptop that was found in his en-suite bathroom.

The images, which ranged from level one to level four of the Copine scale - which categories the severity of images - were found on the hard drive.

Prosecutors said some of the children in the images were as young as two-years-old, and it was thought some dated back to January 2010.

Quirk had installed a social media app that "shredded" past conversations and files and software that cleaned up files on his laptop, the court was told.

He pleaded guilty to 10 charges of making indecent images and two of taking indecent photographs.

Sentencing him, Deemster Graeme Cook said in installing the software on his laptop Quirk had been "seeking to hide your tracks".

It was his "public duty" to sentence him to an immediate period of imprisonment for what had been a "lengthy period of offending", the deemster added.

Quirk was also placed on extended licence for two years after his release, and handed a sexual offences prevention order restricting his access to electronic devices and the internet.