PAEDOPHILE Kevin Whitehand is today behind bars after he admitted downloading indecent pictures of children as young as two years old.Whitehand, 41, of Broadwater Gardens, Shotley Gate, pleaded guilty at Ipswich Crown Court to 16 charges of making indecent photographs of a child under the age of 16.

PAEDOPHILE Kevin Whitehand is today behind bars after he admitted downloading indecent pictures of children as young as two years old.

Whitehand, 41, of Broadwater Gardens, Shotley Gate, pleaded guilty at Ipswich Crown Court to 16 charges of making indecent photographs of a child under the age of 16.

He was sentenced to six months in prison and will be on the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years.

Robert Sadd, prosecuting, told the court that 156 indecent images were found on Whitehand's computer. Mr Sadd said: "He sent his computer away for repair and those repairing it discovered a title of an indecent image of a child and they contacted the police."

Child pornography images are graded from level one, the least serious, to level five, the most serious category.

Whitehand's computer had 65 images of level one grading, eight at level two, 13 at level three, 69 at level four and one at level five.

The pictures had been downloaded between January and April 2003 and some featured two-year-old children and other images were movie files.

Maria Dineen, mitigating, said: "Mr Whitehand does accept full responsibility for these offences. The question of how, when or why these images come to be on his computer, he is not able to offer the court any real explanation.

"He was depressed and had been for some time. He moved to the Suffolk area from the north and he has led a rather isolated existence working shift work as a fork-lift driver for a food processing and packaging firm in Sible Hedingham, Essex.

"The result being there was no social life and his computer became his best friend, his only form of entertainment in the moments he was not at work.

"He will clearly be a vulnerable prisoner. As a man who has never before faced a custody sentence, he is going to find it very difficult.

"On his eventual release he will find employment more difficult to come by given the nature of these offences."

High Court judge Mr Justice Aikens said that Whitehand would be on licence for two years after he had completed his prison sentence.

Mr Aikens told Whitehand: "You are not remorseful and do not understand the nature of these offences or the suffering that production of images with children occasions.

"I do find there is an aggravating feature because of the young age of a lot of the children in these images."