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A paedophile caught with baby rape videos walked free from court after convincing a judge he was sorry.

Kevin Taylor downloaded nearly 30 vile clips, some of which he stored in folders captioned "incest" and "wrong".

But the 28-year-old, of St Ambrose Croft, Netherton, claimed not to know how they got on his computer.

During a three-day trial, Taylor suggested they may have been downloaded inadvertently alongside legal movies and games.

He was convicted at Liverpool Crown Court of three counts of making and one count of possessing indecent images of children.

(Image: Liverpool Echo)

His sick stash included 20 Category A - the most serious category - plus three Category B and four Category C videos.

Sarah Holt, prosecuting, said: "In the opinion of the officer, the youngest children in the Category A images were less than a year old."

Ms Holt told the court the clips were recovered from three devices - a tower PC and two external hard drives - all belonging to Taylor.

Items indicative of child sex abuse images were found in the PC recycle bin, and file sharing peer-to-peer software was repeatedly installed and uninstalled.

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The prosecutor said software was also used to clean the computer on numerous occasions and to remove files, all downloaded between 2013 and 2017.

She said there was more than 100 files, which couldn't be opened, that were indicative of child sex abuse images, referred to in court as "traces".

Ms Holt said: "There was also the folder he created on the computer which had the title incest, with a sub-folder titled 'wrong'.

"Indeed, wrong and incest featured in the descriptions across the images or the title files."

Paul Becker, defending, said Taylor, who has no previous convictions, was currently unemployed and on benefits.

However, he said Taylor, who was out of work because of this case, could make a contribution towards court costs.

Judge Robert Warnock said the Probation Service had provided a "particularly incisive" pre-sentence report.

He said the report showed Taylor had belatedly realised what he had done and apologised for his conduct.

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The judge said: "It stands you in good stead that you have some insight into the fact that possession of these images promotes child abuse.

"I take into account the timescale, it was some time ago now, and I've taken into account what you've said in the pre-sentence report.

"If there had not been a degree of insight and remorse in this case, it's almost certain that I would put you into custody.

"These images are children being abused. You might not have fully realised that but you must have begun to realise it when you saw in particular the Category A images to which the Crown have just referred."

He said his "primary concern" was the protection of those children and that a "challenging" three-year community order could better achieve this than a two-year suspended prison sentence.

(Image: Liverpool Echo)

Judge Warnock added: "If not demanding, it's certainly going to be eye-opening as far as you're concerned."

He handed Taylor a 40-day Rehabilitation Activity Requirement and told him to attend 31 sessions of a Horizon sex offenders treatment programme.

The judge ordered him to complete 100 hours of unpaid work and to pay £750 towards court costs.

He told Taylor to sign on the Sex Offenders Register and to comply with a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for five years.

Judge Warnock warned Taylor that if he didn't comply with the orders, "forefront" in his mind would be sending him to jail.