A MARRIED man from Minety who tried to import what police believed was a child sex doll has agreed to allow it to be destroyed despite it not being deemed illegal.

Additionally Ritchie Plumb, Derry Park, Minety was given a community order and told to register as a sex offender when he was sentenced for downloading 2000 indecent images of children at Swindon crown court today.

Plumb bought the 'child sex doll' last December and after it was intercepted by the authorities, police went to his home and scoured his computers.

As well as finding numerous indecent images of children they also uncovered Facebook messages and other conversations about his paedophilia.

After ruling he should sentence based on the hoard of images in the lowest category a judge at Swindon Crown Court put him on a community order.

And despite the 37-year-old having told probation he wanted to keep the doll he was persuaded to hand it over so it can be destroyed.

Rob Welling, prosecuting, said "He drew attention to himself because the police received information he had tried, as far as they were concerned, to import a child sex doll.

"He was originally charged with that offence. I have seen the advice, it indicates that although it is a small doll it is a doll to depict an adult, not a child, so it was not deemed to be obscene.

"It almost certainly was intended to be representative of a child. We can see from the defendant's computer log he had a interest in children, female children."

Mr Welling said that they found hundreds of images stored on the machine, many stored in files for quick access.

He said there were four in the worst category, 11 in the middle and 1,963 in band C, the least serious, as well as 11 pseudo images of children.

The Minety man pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children and one of possessing prohibited images of children.

After the judge warned it would be in his favour to agree, despite telling probation he wanted to keep it, he agreed to sign it away.

Tony Bignall, defending, said his client had undergone an online course and his wife is standing by him.

Passing sentence Judge Jason Taylor QC said "As far as the guidelines for this type of offending are concerned, ordinarily a judge would approach the case with reference to the most serious images.

"To do this in this case would be unrepresentative of this case as your interest is overwhelmingly tilted towards class C images."

He imposed a two year community order with 40 days of rehabilitation activity requirement and 200 hours of unpaid work.

Plumb was also put on a sexual harm prevention order for five years and also told to register as a sex offender for that period.