Dr Robert Manley pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and was jailed for three years
A family doctor who downloaded nearly 90,000 indecent images of children was jailed for three years today.
Robert Manley, 46, from Heanor, Derbyshire, had admitted downloading pictures and movies of children, including those in the most serious category, and storing them on computers and CDs.
He had pleaded guilty at Derby Crown Court to 32 charges relating to indecent images.
Recorder Michael Elsom also ordered the GP, who has already been suspended by the General Medical Council, to be disqualified from working with children and to sign the sex offenders register.
The court heard that Manley downloaded the images between April 2003 and February this year, when he was arrested.
He was caught when Polish authorities investigating a file-sharing website alerted British authorities that his computer's IP address had come up as downloading pictures and videos.
Police investigations found thousands of pictures stored on several computers and CDs at his house.
Further examinations also found images on a computer at the Brooklyn Medical Practice in Heanor where he was a partner.
Today the court heard that a total of 89,515 images were discovered. Of those, 342 were in the most serious category.
The images, some of which involved children as young as two or three and animals, were described as 'distressing scenes'.
Sentencing Manley today, the judge said: 'By your pleas of guilty you have brought disgrace and shame on yourself. Equally, no doubt, you have brought a degree of reflected shame and disgrace on your family and friends and on colleagues, and it's your family and no doubt former colleague as well who will continue to suffer.
'Society rightly takes a view of offenders such as you that only a sentence of imprisonment is appropriate.
'The people who really have to be protected in cases such as these are the very young children whose images you chose to view and stored in what can only be described as very large quantities indeed.'
The charges against Manley included one of possessing images with the intent to distribute them.
He said he had stored them on computers at home, where his 14-year-old son lived, and they could easily have been viewed.
Timothy Achurch, prosecuting, said Manley had searched for child porn online using the words 'child', 'teenage' and 'pre-teen'.
Mr Achurch said his client admitted he was 'addicted to collecting that type of imagery, he found it difficult to stop'.
'He admitted he had made nine PowerPoint presentations, selecting them and putting them into that software to make the viewing easier.'
Alwyn Jones, defending the GP, said he had made 'one of the most spectacular falls from grace and self-destruction that the courts have seen for some significant time'.
He said: 'He is a man who had everything to gain and nothing to lose by maintaining his normal lifestyle. He will lose everything.
'His good name has gone, his lifestyle has gone, and his work future has clearly been destroyed by his own stupidity.
'He accepts and is ashamed that he has brought disgrace on his wife, child, family and friends who have known him for many, many years.'
Today both the local Primary Care Trust and Brooklyn Medical Practice said there had been no allegations involving Manley's role as a doctor.
'We can reassure the practice's patients and the public that there is no evidence to suggest that patients have been put at risk or harmed and that there have been no allegations by patients of improper behaviour by Dr Manley,' said Dr Alan Meakin from Derbyshire County Primary Care Trust.
Ruth Allen, head of intelligence at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said: 'This is yet another example of the collaboration between national and international law enforcement to track and hold child sex offenders to account.
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