A 58-year-old Felixstowe man who was reported to the police after a house clearance worker he employed discovered printouts of indecent images of children has walked free from court after a judge decided not to send him to prison.

Peter Ellis, a former shipping company worker, was planning to sell up and move to Thailand when a member of the house clearance team found pornographic pictures of children in a bedroom, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

Police later took away and searched computer equipment belonging to Ellis and further images were found.Peter Ellis, of Rowan Crescent, Felixstowe, pleaded guilty to three charges of making indecent images of a child and was given a three year community order during which he will have to attend the internet sex offenders’ treatment programme.

He was also ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for five years and made the subject of a five year sexual harm prevention order.

The offences related to a period between 2001-2014.

Sentencing him, Judge John Devaux said a total of around 20,000 indecent images of children were found in Ellis’s possession including 1,752 images at the most serous level A, 2,300 at level B and more than 15,000 at level C.

He said some of the children featured in the images were as young as five.

Judge Devaux said Ellis had pleaded guilty to the offences on the basis that the material had come into his possession in the form it was discovered prior to 2007.

He said there was no evidence that Ellis had repeated the course of conduct after 2006.

“Your activities came to light as a result of a decision by you to sell up and move abroad. The removal firm you hired discovered material you’d printed off some 12 years earlier so you could gratify yourself. You were arrested and interviewed and police removed from you address two computers. All this came to light as a result of your naivety, carelessness and forgetfulness,” said the judge.

Paul Donegan, for Ellis, said his client was in poor health and would benefit from an internet sex offenders’ treatment programme to help prevent him reoffending.