A YOUTH worker who built up a collection of 100,000 indecent images of young children, including youngsters from Bolton, has been jailed for five years.

Brian Wilkinson pleaded guilty to 41 specimen offences of making, possessing and distributing indecent photographs of children between August 1998 and September 2001.

Some of the material dated back 20 years and included photographs, video footage and digital images downloaded from the internet.

The pictures depicted both boys and girls being sexually abused -- some as young as six months.

There were also indecent photographs of children which had been taken by the 40-year-old himself using a hidden camera and camcorder.

Only 12 of the children have been traced.

Sentencing the volunteer youth worker at Manchester Crown Court yesterday, His Honour Judge Michael Henshell said: "You are a paedophile and you became a youth worker in order to gain contact with children and used your position to commit some of these offences.

"The amount of material seized is far more than has been seen in this area and your distribution adds to the degradation and abuse of children."

Detectives seized the pictures from his home in Gorton after members of the public caught him filming young children playing in a park in Manchester in September last year.

About 50,000 digital images and a further 50,000 images in video format were recovered, making it the biggest seizure of child porn ever made by Greater Manchester Police.

Wilkinson, formerly of Abbey Hey Lane, Gorton, shared the pictures and stories of child abuse over the internet with other like-minded people and had even set up his own "chat groups" entitled Boy Love.

DC Ian Strong of Longsight CID said: "Wilkinson would take pictures both overtly and covertly in parks and swimming pools and of groups of children he came into contact with around Manchester and Bolton.

"We feel that the sentence will protect children in and around Manchester while we continue to track and monitor others like him."

The court was told Wilkinson had a 20 year history of mental illness and lived as a recluse.

He was also disqualified from working with children for an indefinite period and his name has been added to the sex offenders register.