ONE of Warrington’s biggest hoarders of paedophilic images has been jailed after detectives unearthed more than 34,500 indecent images of young children.

Twenty-eight-year-old Alan Webb, of Poplars Avenue, Orford appeared at Warrington Crown Court on Friday after admitting possessing, downloading and file sharing indecent photos of children.

The court heard Webb, a cheque clearing operator, ranked himself as a near genius with computers and had hidden 34,569 images of children, many of whom were aged five and six but some were as young as two.

Brett Williamson, prosecuting, said more than 21,000 photos were level one images sexualising children but 722 were at level five showing youngsters involved in the most sickening acts.

Investigators also found 51 videos graded one to four in Webb’s possession after executing a search warrant at his home last April 22.

Mr Williamson said Webb’s seedy activities came to light when his IP address was identified during an American investigation into chat programme Google Hello that allowed users to download large amounts of images and comment on the photos.

He added: “He admitted using Google Hello over two years, five days a week. He said his initial preference was for 15-year-old females but over time this has reduced to level one images of children aged between six and 12 but that is a probable conservative estimate.

“He admitted sexual gratification from the images and said he was surprised by the number on his computer.

”It is clear he has been actively involved in possession and dstributution of images of children over a number of years using a variety of computer programmes.”

The court heard Webb was previously of good character.

Nova Howarth, defending, said: “He has huge consideration of the enormous embarrassment he has caused his family.

“He had not appreciated the wider picture of abuse that these children were subject to. He accepts it is not acceptable behaviour.”

Judge Stephen Clarke jailed Webb for two-and-a-half years, disqualified him from working with children, ordered him to sign the sex offenders’ register for life and imposed a host of sexual offence prevention orders.

He said: “This is the largest number the court has come across in recent times.

“There are real victims in these cases. They are the children. They are four, five and six years of age and subject to the most appalling sexual depravity for your sexual gratification.

"They were ruthlessly exploited and what impact it will have on them when they grow up is incalculable.

“How people can do that to little children defies imagination.”


THE family of a man jailed for stockpiling indecent photos of children said they would have reported him had they known.

Inspector Andy Ross of Warrington Central NPU said: “I have spoken to the family and they are completely devastated.

“They knew nothing about it and can’t understand why he would do something like this.

“Had they known about it they would have reported him themselves.”


AN investigator from the Crime Support Unit said file sharing made it easy to acquire large numbers of images from the internet.

DC Tim Freeman said: “It is quite easy to run up such figures as Alan Webb when regularly using file sharing programmes such as Google Hello which can transfer an awful lot of images very quickly.

“The programme has now been closed down because of this sort of behaviour.”