A FORMER scoutmaster who kept more than 9,000 photographs and videos featuring the sexual torture of children 'for entertainment' was jailed for 15 months on Monday.

David Daines, 44, was caught with a camcorder tape depicting a nine-year-old boy who had been groomed by a fellow scoutmaster for sex.

The youngster was heard to say: "This is for you uncle David," before he was molested by the friend.

Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court heard 90 of the most serious level five images depicted sexual torture in which children as young as four or five were horrifically abused.

A five minute camcorder clip taken through the fence of a primary school showing young girls and boys at play was also found - but was not the subject of a charge.

The sickening hoard is believed to date back to 1996 when married Daines, of Somervell Road, South Harrow, had just left his job as leader with the Baden Powell Scouts Association.

He was sacked in 1995 after bosses learned he had a previous conviction for possessing an indecent image of a child under 16.

A jury found him guilty of a string of similar charges last month following a trial.

Until recently Daines was an IT manager at a Wembley building firm, and used his skills to hide his tracks when he heard police were on his trail in 2001.

Child abuse investigators had discovered his links to convicted paedophile and ex Baden Powell scoutmaster Paul Woodruff, 40, from Middlesborough.

Woodruff, who was seen abusing the nine-year-old in the sick camcorder video, was jailed for 11 years at Teeside Crown Court, in 2003.

Detectives then returned to Daines' home in December 2003, and caught the paedophile by surprise.

Home-made video cassettes were recovered together with computers storing thousands of images of children being abused by adults.

Jailing him for 15 months Judge Timothy Lawrence said: 'You were convicted of many counts after trial, though you protested your innocence in the face of what seemed to me and the jury overwhelming evidence.

'You still maintain a complete lack of remorse for the possession of these images.

'Each one is of a real, live child whose degradation is depicted for your own amusement and entertainment.

'It is an offence likely to mark these children psychologically if not for the rest of their lives then a very long time.

'It is an offence which society at large finds abhorrent.' He was also banned from working or having unsupervised contact with children for life, and will also sign on the sex offenders' register for life.

Outside court investigating officer Det Insp Ian Hughes, of the Met Police Major Investigation Child Abuse Team, said: 'We have conducted a detailed and painstaking investigation to bring Daines to justice.' Daines denied eight sample counts of possessing indecent images of children and two of making indecent images of children but was convicted by the jury.