A former scoutmaster who kept photographs and videos showing the sexual torture of children was caught when police found a home-movie made for him by a North-East paedophile.
David Daines, 44, was caught with a camcorder tape of a nine-year-old boy who had been groomed for sex by fellow scoutmaster Paul Woodruff.
The youngster was heard to say: "This is for you uncle David," before he was molested by Middlesbrough man Woodruff, a former member of the Scouts Association, and the breakaway Baden Powell Scouts Association.
Police swooped after Woodruff was arrested in 2001. The Teesside man was convicted of the rape and two indecent assaults of a teenage Scout. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Police also found 16,000 Internet child porn images on Woodruff's PC following a raid on his home.
Woodruff and his 76-year-old mother were driven by neighbours from their council house on the Brambles Farm estate, Middlesbrough, after a former Scout reported him to the police.
More sinister evidence came to light when they uncovered evidence that the Teesside man may have been part of a peadophile ring. Officers from Cleveland worked closely with their counterparts in the Metropolitan Police.
Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court heard today how the investigation led them to Daines who was the 'uncle David' referred to on the sickening tape.
Until recently Daines was an IT manager at a Wembley building firm, and used his skills to hide his tracks when he heard police were on his trail in 2001.
But detectives were merely biding their time and returned to Daines' home in December 2003, where they caught the paedophile by surprise. Home-made video cassettes were recovered together with computers storing thousands of images of children being abused by adults.
The Court heard 90 of the most serious level five images depicted sexual torture in which children as young as four or five were horrifically abused.
A five-minute camcorder clip taken through the fence of a primary school showing young girls and boys at play was also found - but was not the subject of a charge.
The sickening hoard is believed to date back to 1996 when married Daines, of 28 Somervell Road, South Harrow, Middlesex, had just left his job as leader with the Baden Powell Scouts Association.
He was sacked in 1995 after bosses learned he had a previous conviction for possessing an indecent image of a child under 16.
A jury found him guilty of a string of similar charges last month following a trial.
Daines denied eight sample counts of possessing indecent images of children and two of making indecent images of children but was convicted by the jury.
Jailing him for 15 months Judge Timothy Lawrence said: "You still maintain a complete lack of remorse for the possession of these images.
"Each one is of a real, live child whose degradation is depicted for your own amusement and entertainment.
"It is an offence likely to mark these children psychologically if not for the rest of their lives then a very long time. It is an offence which society at large finds abhorrent."
He was also banned from working or having unsupervised contact with children for life, and will also sign on the sex offenders' register for life.
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