A VOYEUR from has been jailed after he bought a spy camera from Amazon and installed it secretly in a bathroom at his Dawlish home.

Paul Powell also downloaded more than 50,000 child abuse images from the dark web and his voyeurism was only discovered when police seized and examined his computer.

They found naked images of a young woman which he had filmed when she was visiting his home in Dawlish. 

The victim had no idea she was being filmed and was so traumatised when she found out that she is now scared to take a shower.

Google searches he made on his phone showed that he had a sexual interest in under age girls and checks on his e-mail account showed receipts from Amazon for the purchase of the secret camera. 

He had transferred the images of the woman onto a desktop computer to view them and police were able to identify them easily because they carried a date stamp and the words ‘my hidden camera’.

Powell, aged 56, of Dawlish, admitted voyeurism, three counts of making, by downloading, indecent images of children and possession of prohibited and extreme images.

He was jailed for two years and four months by Judge James Patrick at Exeter Crown Court, put on the sex offenders’ register, and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order which will restrict his contact with children and allow police to monitor his online activity.

The judge told him: ‘You were heavily addicted to pornography and used a number of devices to view and store images of child abuse. The voyeurism was carried out for your sexual gratification.’

Mr Nigel Wraith, prosecuting, said police became aware that images and videos were being downloaded from a secure server on the dark web and traced Powell through his IP address. 

They raided his home in February 2022 and an initial examination of his phone and computer showed not only a huge number of illegal images, but also footage from his secret filming. 

In all, he had more than 50,000 images or movies depicting abuse of children including 617 movies showing girls suffering serious sexual assaults at the hands of men. One girl was as young as 10 and others were in obvious pain or distress.

Mr Warren Robinson, defending, said Powell accepted he needed help and has completed a course run by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation to address his addiction to child images.

He is keen to go on a sex offenders’ course which would only be available to him if he remained out of prison and in the community. 

He also has caring responsibilities for an adult son.