CHILDREN as young as six featured in thousands of sickening child abuse images which were downloaded by a Carlisle man.

But the jail term handed to 46-year-old Richard Nobes for his crimes was suspended after a judge accepted that he is a principal carer for his elderly father and that there is a realistic prospect of rehabilitation.

The defendant, of Sheffield Street, Carlisle, admitted four offences.

They were: downloading 1,359 indecent child images classified as Category A, the most serious kind of such image; downloading 674 Category B images; and downloading 4,291 Category C images.

He committed the offences between November 7, 2020, and May 6, 2021. Nobes also admitted possessing prohibited images of children on June 17. He denied a fifth allegation of possessing extreme pornography.

The prosecution accepted that plea.

Prosecutor Brendan Burke said the crimes came to light on June 17 when police, acting on intelligence received, visited the Carlisle home where Nobes was living at the time and carried out a search.

As police arrived, Nobes appeared to know why they were there but he told the officers: “That was years ago.”

Mr Burke said: “In fact, the images were created between April, 2019 and May of 2021."

All of the images recovered by the police were inaccessible to the defendant at the time of his arrest because he had deleted them, said Mr Burke. Nobes had been using a social media website that is popular with young people.

Judge Andrew Jefferies KC said there were two features of the defendant’s offending which were particularly serious. One was the sheer volume of indecent child images, which featured still and moving images, some as young as six.

The second aggravating feature was the charge involving distribution of some of the images involved. Judge Jefferies imposed an eight-month jail sentence but suspended it for two years.

He did this, he said, for three reasons: the defendant’s remorse, his prospects for rehabilitation, and the fact that he is the principal carer for his father, a fact supported by medical evidence.

The suspended sentence includes 40 rehabilitation activity days, designed to address the defendant’s “interest in children”. Nobes will be on the Sex Offender Register for a decade.

A sexual harm prevention order, governing his use of the internet, will be in place for the same period. Judge Jefferies told Nobes: “I would have sentenced you to [immediate] eight months prison but two things stopped me.

“One, the probation officer thinks you can be worked with to control any sexual interest you may have in children and the rehabilitative possibilities; and two, the material I have seen and extracts relating to the ill-health of your father and the fact that you are effectively his main carer.

“If I did put you in prison today, for a relatively short period, it would have a disproportionate effect on your father, who has done nothing wrong.”

The defendant, said to have been living under certain unspecified 'stresses' when he committed the offences, formerly lived at an address in Lightfoot Drive, Harraby, Carlisle. Nobes had no previous convictions.