An “appalling” paedophile who owned extreme pornographic material involving minors and talked about abusing children has been jailed for eight years.

Alton man Gavin Chivers was sentenced on Tuesday at Winchester Crown Court after pleading guilty to 23 offences, including possession of indecent images and attempted sexual communications with a child.

An officer involved in the case called the 39-year-old of Russett Road “a dangerous individual” with counts involving obscene images making up most of the charges.

Chivers was arrested by Hampshire Police on March 31 after being suspected by their Internet Child Abuse Team of accessing indecent images of children online.

The defendant claimed he had downloaded the images with the intention of trying to earn the trust of offenders online in order to identify and report them.

But an examination of his phone revealed a vast number of chats discussing the abuse of children along with a large cache of harrowing indecent images and videos.

The court heard no evidence was discovered to support Chivers’ claim that he was attempting to identify offenders and he was charged with multiple offences.

Chivers was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register and handed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, both for life, with his acts appalling PC Ollie Green of the Internet Child Abuse Team.

He said: “Having been in the department for nearly five years, this is by far the worst case I have come across.

“It is not often where I can say that the written words in the conversations were as disturbing and appalling as the images themselves.”

Information and advice about reporting online child abuse can be found on the www.hampshire.police.uk website.