A UNIVERSITY graduate who used Twitter to download indecent images of children was warned that he will go to jail if he cannot change his ways.

Lee Farron, from Runcorn, had been sentenced for downloading child porn in 2014 but when police called at his home again last year they found he had been repeating his sordid behaviour.

A court heard that it was initially believed that he had been using Twitter to distribute the images but investigations revealed that he had been searching for them on the social media platform and then sending them to himself.

Following his earlier conviction he was ordered to sign on the sex offenders register and Iain Criddle, prosecuting, explained that he had breached the terms of that order by not telling police that he had been using alias names.

These were Hot Selfies 69 and CM Gamer which he used to set up two Twitter accounts and search for indecent images of children, he said.

When police raided Farron’s home on The Glen, Palacefields, they seized his computer tablet and found he had downloaded 65 such images in the lowest category. When he was later interviewed he admitted his offending behaviour.

The 25-year-old pleaded guilty to making indecent images between April and July last year, possessing them and breaching the terms of his sex offenders registration.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that he has a previous conviction for exposure in 2007 and in March 2014 he received a six month suspended prison sentence for possessing indecent images but it could not be shown that the latest offences breached that order.

Defence barrister Simon Christie said that Farron suffered from psychological problems following a family trauma and this led to him cutting himself off from his friends.

“This is a sad case involving an isolated man,” he said. Mr Christie added that Farron has lost his job after his employers found out about the offences.

Sentencing Farron to a three year community order yesterday Judge Steven Everett said that downloading such images encouraged child abusers.

He pointed out that although the images were all in the lowest category the children “had been subjected to some form of sexual abuse, taking photographs of them.

“We will ever know if the abuser went on to do other things to them. What you did is encourage that sort of thing. It is important you keep that in mind. It is not a victimless crime.”

Judge Everett said that although Farron was educated to degree level and was obviously intelligent he is immature and suffers from depression and anxiety.

He ordered him to attend a stringent sex offenders course and to carry out 25 days rehabilitation activities.

He was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register for five years and he imposed a sexual harm prevention order for the same length of time.

He told him to apply his intelligence to consider his behaviour, adding: “If you cannot change there will come a time when you will go through that door (to the cells).”