A married Bristol man who tricked a teenage girl into letting him see her topless over her webcam and then distributed the picture has been jailed for six months.

John McBurney had boasted that he liked seeing younger girls in an email to an undercover officer before sending him the picture of the 14-year-old girl.

McBurney, 42, of Marina Gardens, Fishponds was then arrested and police found 3,681 indecent images of children on his home computers.

In a police interview, he admitted he used internet chat rooms to fantasize about children.

The shift worker said he had trouble sleeping and browsed the internet for lewd images.

He pleaded guilty to two charges of making indecent images of children and 21 charges of distributing indecent images of children and was jailed for six months.

He was also disqualified from working with children and was placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years.

James Ward, prosecuting, told the court how McBurney was arrested after he told a police officer using a chat room on the evening of December 8, 2007 that he had "fooled" a 14-year-old girl into flashing her breasts at him over her webcam.

He told the officer: "She thinks I am someone else. I like seeing younger girls."

Officers then went to the defendant's home and seized three computers containing 3,681 indecent images of children.

The court heard that McBurney told police he had been having marital problems after having an affair with an 18-year-old girl who was 17 when he started seeing her and who had sent him webcam movies of herself.

Mr Ward said: "He admitted he used internet chat rooms to talk about the sexual abuse of children but said it was fantasy. He denied having any sexual interest in children and accepted he was the person responsible for the images."

Robert Morgan-Jones, defending, said his client was a hard-working family man but had a second life described as a "fantasy lifestyle."

He said that was as a result of marital difficulties and shift work that left him unable to sleep and browsing the internet. Mr Morgan-Jones said the defendant accepted that he needed help.

Jailing McBurney, Judge James Tabor QC said: "You possessed a lot of photographs, some which were mildly offensive and many, sadly, which were outrageous.

"The principal reason the courts punish these things is that it's because of people such as yourself looking at these images that they are made and children suffer as a result.

"There's another side as well that's very unattractive in this case and that is that you conned a girl into bearing her top half to you and you took a photo of her, all be it through the internet, and you distributed it and you distributed others as well."