A MAN who used a camera hidden in a basket of clothes to secretly film youths and young boys as they changed at a Dover Leisure Centre has been jailed for two years.

Brian Wood's perverted activities were unearthed by police who were alerted because of his downloading of child pornography on the Internet.

Officers went to Wood's home in Balfour Road, Dover, in May 2006 and seized computer equipment, video cassetts, cam corders and printed images of naked young males and boys.

Some 67,000 images were found, the majority having been downloaded from the Internet, but 7,500 images were created from Wood's covert filming.

Most of the images from the leisure centre in Dover were in catagories one and two but other images in Wood's possession went up to level five, showing the most depraved images.

Wood, 52, a gardener, returned for sentencing at Canterbury Crown Court having previously admitted 27 offences of taking and making indecent images of chldren between January 1990 and May 2006 and four voyeurism charges.

Judge Michael O'sullivan told Wood the viewing of sexual images was like a drug and led him to seek out even more abusive and depraved material.

Wood's licence on release from prison was extended by 15 months to enable him to participate in the Thames Valley Sex Offender Treatment programme. He will be on the sex offenders register for 10 years and subject to a sexual offences prevention order indefinitly.

Wood had asked for 14 similar offences to be considered involving over 16,000 images at all five levels.

At the previous hearing Wood's counsel, Dominic Webber, had stressed Wood's guilty plea and cooperation with the probation service. He said the subjects were unaware they wre being filmed and there was no evidence Wood shared any of the material with others.

Nor was there any evidence of grooming, no contact or sexual activity.