A warped pensioner who is "addicted" to seeing children being raped has been jailed - after he was caught with nearly half-a-million horrific child sex abuse images.
James Barr had a laptop and a total of 92 USB sticks, crammed with 465,064 images of young children being raped and tortured.
The 72-year-old was busted by police at his home in Johnstone , Renfrewshire, in August - with police discovering the shocking abuse images on his devices.
He previously appeared in court charged over the find and was released on bail, with special conditions designed to prevent him from accessing more illegal images online.
But when officers arrived at his home in January this year to carry out a bail check they found another laptop and two further USB devices.
They were crammed with a further 24,885 images Barr had downloaded in just six months, taking his total haul to 489,949.
He held his hands up over his sordid obsession when he appeared in the dock at Paisley Sheriff Court last month, pleading guilty to downloading abuse images at his home on various occasions between January 1, 2012, and January 31 this year.
Procurator Fiscal Depute Keri Marshall, prosecuting, told the court that Barr had both still images and films, and that many of the images he had were categorised as being the most serious there is with some of the victims aged just six-months-old.
After hearing that the amount of images Barr had downloaded, and the fact he had continued to do it after being caught initially, was because he has "an addiction to it", Sheriff Seith Ireland had called for background reports to be prepared ahead of sentencing.
The sheriff had ordered that Barr be assessed by social workers and professionals who help rehabilitate sex offenders in Renfrewshire ahead of sentencing for what he termed the "very serious matter."
When Barr returned to the dock today, Sheriff Ireland was asked to consider placing him on a community-based disposal, which would allow him to go to counselling, to try and get him to change his ways.
But he ruled prison was the only place the pensioner was going, caging him for 27 months, reduced from three years as he admitted his guilt.
He was also placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for 10 years.
