A registered sex offender from Ripon has been jailed for possessing videos showing girls as young as six being raped.

Andrew Burt, a former maintenance worker at Newby Hall, was on a strict court order which banned him from possessing any internet-enabled device without informing police, York Crown Court heard.

But when his monitoring officers turned up at his home in Skelton-on-Ure, which is between Ripon and Boroughbridge, they found two new devices which he hadn’t disclosed to police.

Police seized the devices, one of which was an LG mobile phone on which they found five video clips featuring the rape of young girls.

Burt was charged with possessing indecent images of children and two breaches of a sexual-harm prevention order which had been imposed in November 2017 for inciting an under-age ‘girl’ to engage in sexual activity.  He appeared for sentence on Thursday after admitting all three charges.

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Prosecutor Ms Hajba-Ward said Burt was a registered sex offender and still subject to the 10-year order when police called at his home earlier this month.

They found two unregistered devices including the mobile and a tablet of which police had not been notified.

The videos found on the phone were rated Category A – the worst kind of such material depicting the rape of pre-pubescent children.

Burt told police he had downloaded the images at a guest house “while drinking a lot of Strongbow (cider)”.

Caught by a vigilante

In 2017, Burt was jailed for 20 months after being caught by an online vigilante posing as a 14-year-old girl.

The adult decoy told police she had been chatting to a man on the internet who had used a false name and said he worked at Newby Hall.

Burt had sent her naked pictures of himself and a video of himself performing a lewd act.

He was ultimately identified by photos which showed that he was indeed a maintenance worker on the country estate.

The sexual-harm prevention order was imposed to prevent Burt cruising chatrooms and refusing a polygraph test.

Richard Reed, for Burt, said his client accepted he had a sexual interest in children and wanted help for his problem.

Judge Sean Morris jailed Burt for 32 months, of which he will serve half behind bars before being released on prison licence.

Mr Morris made a new sexual-harm prevention order for life. Burt will remain on the sex-offenders’ register, also for an indefinite period.