AN internet paedophile used his dyslexic partner's credit card to pay for lewd photos and movies involving children because he knew she could not read the bank statements, a court heard.

Brian Gerrard, 56, of Winterslow Road, Trowbridge, amassed more than 10,000 indecent images of children and stored them on his home computer, under names like Little Angels. He was caught as part of Operation Ore, a worldwide police operation on internet paedophiles, which followed the cracking of an internet porn ring based in Texas, USA.

Gerrard admitted 20 charges of downloading child pornography at Chippenham magistrates' court on Friday. Many of the images, collected between May 1999 and September 2003, were level four and five the most serious categories, including images of sadism, bestiality and child rape.

Nicky Jennings, prosecuting, said Gerrard regularly visited sites which contained only child pornography on them. Some of the sites had passwords and Gerrard made regular payments on his partner's credit card to access them. Police raided his home in 2003 and arrested Gerrard, taking away computer towers, zip files, DVDs and other equipment for examination.

He was bailed pending further investigation where it was found that he had categorised the images into sophisticated file structures filing them under names like Little Angels and Annabel, and had also categorised a variety of child abuse movies.

When questioned in September 2003, Gerrard admitted sole responsibility for having the images but when asked if he got any sexual gratification from them he refused to answer.

Mrs Jennings listed the numbers of images found on equipment removed from Gerrard's home.

There were more than 10,000 level one images of children in erotic poses, 139 at level two, 204 at level three, 221 at level four and five level five images, including ones of sadism or bestiality. Edward Moore, defending, said: "Gerrard thought the images were an electronic image disconnected from reality he did not see it as child abuse".

Mr Moore said Gerrard denied having entire movies, just video clips and thought a high percentage of the images were digitally manipulated rather than real photos. Gerrard was granted unconditional bail and ordered to sign the sex offenders register.

The case was transferred to Swindon Crown Court for sentencing after magistrates deemed their powers of punishment were insufficient.