A READING pervert has been jailed after he paid to watch adults performing sex acts on children on the other side of the world.

Joseph Turner, of Tilehurst Road, Reading, was locked up after he paid more than £1,000 to watch live child abuse taking place under his direction in the Philippines.

The 54-year-old also admitted to downloading almost 1,000 indecent images of children between 2009 and 2019.

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Police arrested IT-worker Turner in September 2019 after being made aware of suspicious online activity from his address.

They seized his computers and found 878 indecent images on his computer, 363 of which were accessible files.

123 of the images were ‘category A’ images -- the most explicit types of photographs.

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They featured children as young as four-years-old being sexually abused by adult males.

Prosecutor Mr Carmichael said: “There was a large number of different images and different victims.”

The content of the indecent images led police to discover several payments Turner made via Western Union to the Philippines between 2009 and 2011.

The payments totalled more than $1,000 dollars, Reading Crown Court heard.

Messages discovered by police showed the payments were for Turner’s access to direct the sexual abuse of children in the Philippines via a live video link.

Records showed Turner told young girls to perform sex acts on themselves and on each other.

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Adults would also perform sex acts on children under Turner’s direction.

The payments came to an end when a woman who facilitated the sexual abuse of the children attempted to blackmail Turner.

Turner’s defence advocate, Andrew Storch, said the Reading man was at a ‘low point’ in his life in 2009 following the divorce from his wife.

He turned to drink and recreational drugs to cope, the court heard.

The barrister also said that the 363 indecent images Turner had on his devices were part of a download of 58,000 images.

“I don’t consider that to be a large collection”, he argued.

But His Honour Judge Burgess handed Turner a long sentence for three counts of making indecent images and four counts of commissioning a child sex offence.

Turner was sentenced to three years and four months in prison and was handed an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

His computers will be forfeited and destroyed as a result of his conviction.

Turner was sentenced at Reading Crown Court on Wednesday, March 16.