At a Warwick Crown Court on Thursday, the judge sentenced him to 12 months in jail, suspended for two years. Under that two-year period of supervision, he is forbidden from deleting his history, and has been ordered to attend a community sex offenders programme. He has also been put on the sex offender’s register for the next ten years.

If Beaumont-Dark does not reoffend within the next two years, and meets the requirements, he is unlikely to see jail.

The court heard how the 50-year-old admitted to downloading and sharing videos and images of children between the ages of six months and 13 years since the start of 2011.

The most distressing images included a six-month-old girl being sexually assaulted by an adult man and another one involving an 18-month-old.

Passing sentence, the judge said: “You are 50. You were, until you became enmeshed in this, a man of good character. You pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and you have had entrenched personal problems.

“None of that however diminishes the culpability of allowing yourself to join an internet club of perverts who get sexual gratification from watching babies and small children engage in activity which is sexual.

“You’ve got three boys, they were infants once. These children are someone else’s infants. Money is being made out of them.”

The judge also made Beaumont-Dark the subject of a sexual offences prevention order for seven years and ordered him to hand over his computer to be destroyed and to pay prosecution costs of £1,200.

The judge said: “I believe that after seven years and the programmes you will go through you won’t be tempted to do this again.”

“You look a man who is sorry and you look a man who is relieved but also humiliated. Try to remember this day if you are ever in your study clicked through the internet.”