AN unemployed man who copied children's photographs off Facebook to make sexual images because he was lonely has been jailed for 18 months.

James Taylor, 35, admitted 15 charges of possessing indecent images and videos of children, possessing extreme pornographic images and videos and making pseudo photos of children.

Michael Cahill, prosecuting at York Crown Court, said police found the children's altered photographs when they raided Taylor's home in Micklegate, York, along with other sexual photos and videos of children and photos and videos of extreme pornography featuring adults.

Police found 29 indecent photographs of children, of which five were in the highest category and four indecent videos of children.

Mr Cahill said two of the three children in the four pseudo photos had been identified.

Taylor's solicitor advocate Liam Hassan said his client was unemployed and isolated socially, without social or work friends, so spent long hours at home on the internet.

He said that had led Taylor to commit the offences.

Judge Tom Bayliss QC said: "The public would be horrified - will be horrified - to know that men like you take images of children from the internet, posted there by them for their pleasure and those of their friends, and use them for your perverted sexual lust.

"The children weren't physically harmed, but knowledge that their photographs, which have been innocently placed by them on the internet, have been used by you and manipulated in this way must have had an impact upon them."

In addition to the 18-month prison sentence, Taylor was put on the sex offenders' register for ten years and made subject for ten years to a sexual harm prevention order that bans him from using the internet without special software or controls aimed at stopping him repeating his offences.

The court heard Taylor had been convicted in 2000 of making and distributing pseudo photos.