A vile OAP who is “addicted” to seeing children being raped was finally caged after storing a haul of nearly half-a-million child sex abuse images.

James Barr, 72, downloaded videos and photos of babies and toddlers being tortured by paedophiles.

The pensioner was previously nabbed by cops after filling a laptop and 92 USB sticks with the sickening footage.

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But after being released on bail, the beast crammed another 24,885 images onto harddrives in just six months, taking the total number of abuse files to just under 490,000.

When he returned to Paisley Sheriff Court yesterday, Sheriff Seith Ireland ruled that prison was the suitable place for the repeat offender and caged him for 27 months.

Barr has also been placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for the next decade.

The court had earlier heard that Barr was initially busted by police at his home in Thorn Brae, Johnstone, last August.

He appeared in court charged over the find and was released on bail, with special conditions designed to prevent him from accessing more illegal images online.

But when officers arrived at his home in January this year to carry out a bail check they found another laptop and two USB devices.

He held his hands up over his sordid and sickening obsession when he appeared in the dock at Paisley Sheriff Court pleading guilty to downloading abuse images at his home on various occasions between January 1, 2012, and January 31 this year.

Procurator Fiscal Depute Keri Marshall told the court Barr had images and films that were categorised as being the most serious there are.

The children being abused in the files were aged between six-months-old and 16-years-old and were boys and girls.

As well as videos of young children being raped, he had files that showed youngsters bound, gagged and being tortured.

The content of most of the files is too horrific to report.

After hearing the amount of images Barr had downloaded, and the fact he had continued to do it after being caught initially, was because he has “an addiction to it” Sheriff Ireland called for background reports to be prepared ahead of sentencing.

The sheriff ordered that Barr be assessed by social workers and professionals who help rehabilitate sex offenders in Renfrewshire ahead of sentencing for what he termed the “very serious matter.”

When Barr returned to the dock yesterday, Sheriff Ireland was asked to consider placing him on a community-based disposal, which would allow him to go to counselling, to try and get him to change his ways.

But he ruled prison was the only place the pensioner was going.