A paedophile who downloaded child porn has been spared jail after a judge said prison time would be more dangerous to society in the long term.
Jason Fairfax, 35, of Bargoed, south Wales, had around 2,700 indecent images when police raided his home earlier this year.
The details of the photographs were so serious, Judge David Wyn Morgan asked the media not to publish their details.
He said: "When the police investigated your computer, they found a staggering number of images that were indecent.
"The natural reaction of any decent human being would be that you should go to prison for as long as possible.
"But when the revulsion has subsided, the court must consider precisely what that would achieve.
"You would go into prison as sex offender and still come out as one - just as dangerous if not more so than you are at the moment.
"And the protection of the public must be of paramount concern to the court."
Fairfax's home was raided by police in March this year.
Despite a no-comment interview to officers, he later pleaded guilty to downloading indecent images before magistrates - who said their sentencing powers were not strong enough and referred the case to Crown Court.
Defending barrister Andrew Jones said his client was deeply ashamed of his actions - but said Fairfax had accessed the images when he was suffering with severe depression.
Mr Jones told the court the cause of the depression had been due to the defendant's difficulty in coming to terms with his sexuality.
In mitigation, he added Fairfax had also not distributed the images and had no previous convictions.
Judge Morgan decided to make the defendant the subject of a sex offenders treatment programme for three years. He will also have to sign the sex offenders register until at least 2017 and undertake 250 hours of unpaid work.
Furthermore, Fairfax is not allowed to have any contact with any children under the age of 16 - either in person, on the telephone or via the internet - without the approval of their parents.
He is also banned from deleting the browsing history on his computer as well as erasing any images from a digital camera or camera phone without permission from the police.
Judge Morgan said: "This is not a soft option. It is a particularly difficult one.
"Everybody now knows about you and your reputation has been exploded.
"Should you fail to comply with any of the court's orders then you will wind up in custody."
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