A FAMILY man sexually assaulted a young girl just hours after watching "depraved" child porn images on his computer.

Nicholas Tuck, 50, also had a taste for extreme pornography, hundreds of images of which he viewed online, Bristol Crown Court heard.

Yesterday, Tuck, of Knapp Road, Thornbury, was jailed for a total of 21 months for sexually assaulting a girl under the age of 13, two offences of possessing illegal pornography and six offences of making indecent images of children.

He admitted all of the offences.

Prosecuting, Caroline Bolt told the court that on April 11 Tuck touched a girl sexually under her clothes.

When the girl complained to her family, the police became involved and his computer was seized and examined.

On it, detectives found 308 indecent images of children and 298 images of an "extreme pornographic nature" involving animals, which had been accessed between March 26 and April 2.

Of the child porn images, 41 of them were of category four and 32 were category three, on a scale of one to five for seriousness.

The court heard that Tuck was a web "surfer" who had not saved or distributed them, but his browser records showed he had viewed them and typed incriminating terms into search engines.

Ms Bolt said some of the images had been accessed on the morning of April 11, with the sexual assault taking place in the afternoon.

Mitigating, Robert Morgan-Jones said Tuck was a man of previous excellent character, who had several positive references to his credit.

He said: "He has struggled to come to terms with what he did, up to this day.

"He now accepts that there was some form of sexual attraction, although historically he's found that difficult to understand and relate to."

The court heard before the offending Tuck had suffered the break up of a long-term relationship, was having financial problems and had been drinking more alcohol than he used to.

"He feels very shameful about the way he's behaved," Mr Morgan-Jones added.

Judge Mark Horton jailed Tuck for a total of one year for the indecent images offences and nine months, to run consecutively, for the sexual assault. The 50-year-old has already spent 109 days in custody.

Judge Horton said: "You moved into a depraved and abusive world depicted and provided by the use of the internet."

He said he had a "depraved" and "deviant" interest in the images and the assault was aggravated by the fact he had been looking at some before carrying out the "extremely grave offence".

Tuck will be on the Sex Offenders' Register for the next 10 years, is barred for life from working with children and subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, which includes preventing him from accessing the internet.