A man who was found with 32,000 indecent images of children on a mobile device and had entered the terms 'jailbait and paedo' into an online search engine has narrowly avoided jail.

Paul Cowburn, 35, was convicted of three counts of making indecent images of children, one count of possessing child images and one count of distributing an indecent image of a child, at Preston Magistrates in January.

During his sentencing at Sessions House, prosecuting barrister Holly Nelson told the court how police attended Cowburn's home address in Leyland after concerns were raised over the uploading of indecent images of children using the Kik messenger app.

In a search of the property, police found two Samsung mobile phones, an iPhone and a laptop, which were examined by officers who discovered 32,437 indecent images of children within the devices.

Ms Nelson said: "There were 31,784 category C images, 421 category B images and 282 category A images.

"Further matters that transpired from the investigation of the devices found online searches including 'child erotica at its best', 'hashtag jailbait' and 'paedo'.

The court was told that Cowburn was interviewed on June 16 last year and accepted his guilt.

Ms Nelson went on to tell the court that the age of the children in the images was of concern as there were images of a toddler, a three-year-old and a four-year-old.

Mitigating on behalf of Cowburn, Beverely Hackett said her client, who had never been in trouble with the police before, had sought as much help as he could in order to rehabilitate himself, and expressed genuine remorse and shame.

She said: "In the nearly two years since his arrest never did he step away from his acknowledgement of guilt or did he seek to blame anyone else.

"He has shown true remorse and could not have done more to distance himself from the offending and rehabilitate himself.

"He has difficulty with relationships and is a lonely individual with some difficulties. Would the court be protecting the public by taking a man who has taken all steps to rehabilitate himself and putting him in a custodial situation?"

Cowburn was given eight months in prison suspended for two years, placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years and ordered to undertake 30 days of rehabilitation activity.