A GOUROCK man who spent more than five years amassing a sickening stash of indecent images of children - some of them as young as three - has been spared a jail term.

Jack Morgan was caught with more than 1,000 images when police raided his home in January 2022.

The 37-year-old was rumbled after he began sending indecent messages online to someone he thought was an under-age girl - but who was actually an undercover police officer.

Morgan pleaded guilty at Greenock Sheriff Court earlier this year to two indictment charges covering the period between September 2015 and February 2022.

During this time, he had 1,006 photographs or pseudo-photographs of children on a device at his Albert Road home.

Of these, 235 were classified as falling under category A – the most serious on the scale.

A further 196 were deemed to be category B, with 575 being categorised as category C.

Morgan also admitted attempting communicate indecently with someone he believed to be a child through an online messaging platform between July 2021 and December of the same year.

An undercover officer, posing as a 12-year-old named ‘Ellie’, had created profiles on websites in a bid to identify offenders with a sexual interest in children.

(Image: Newsquest) In July 2021, ‘Ellie’ was sent an invitation to chat with a user – which she accepted and replied to.

Messages ‘of a sexual nature’ were thereafter sent from a device connected to the internet at Morgan’s home address.

Police attended his property in January 2022 to execute a search warrant, and discovered a black iPhone underneath a bed.

Morgan provided the passcode for the device and was later arrested and interviewed by officers.

He confirmed ownership of the phone and made admissions to conversations he had been involved in on a chat platform.

Following his guilty pleas in September, Sheriff Anthony McGeehan deferred Morgan’s sentencing until social work reports had been prepared.

At his sentencing hearing, Morgan was put on a community payback order with two years of social work supervision and was ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work within 12 months.

He was also hit with a curfew which will last for eight months, and was put on the sex offenders register until October 2029.

Morgan was told the sentence was a direct alternative to prison.