A perverted police station worker stole a disc filmed by a rapist attacking his victim and other evidence, a court heard.

Property clerk Ian Michael Carter stole memory sticks and a disc containing “sensitive” photos of victims in sex cases for his own gratification.

Now the man who worked at Huddersfield Police headquarters for 16 years has been jailed, with words of condemnation from a judge.

Jailing him for 20 months, Judge Rodney Jameson QC said “It is the most terrible and disgraceful breach of trust not just to your employers but to these victims.

“It is a breach of trust of the most sensitive sort of material it is really possible to imagine taken by you from your employers when they should have been destroyed and used instead for the purpose of sexual gratification.”

The photos were among evidence which should have been destroyed but instead were taken home by Carter, who was a clerk in the property store at Huddersfield police station.

The photos were on a disc was found in a sports bag in the attic when police searched his address in February after concerns were expressed by other employees and was found to come from a rape prosecution.

Michael Slater prosecuting told Leeds Crown Court the offender in that case had filmed his rape of the victim without her knowledge when she was senseless through drink.

At the conclusion of the case the officer involved had gone through the appropriate procedures to have items either returned or destroyed.

According to a computer audit Carter had destroyed it in 2009 but that was clearly not the case.

Mr Slater said eight memory sticks were found in a bedside table of a rear bedroom at Carter’s home in Blackmoorfoot Road, Crosland Moor.

Tests showed all at some time had been plugged into his laptop. “These were all exhibits from a voyeurism investigation,” said Mr Slater.

He told the court the defendant in that case had used a spy pen camera to take naked images of family members in the bathroom, some of whom were under 18. They too had been marked as destroyed in the records.

The court heard the police search also uncovered other indecent images and extreme pornography involving animals which had no connection to Carter’s work.

On the hard drive of his laptop several images were found of girls as young as six posing mainly with clothes on but one was of a teenage girl in a bath.

Images were also found on 10 computer discs including 711 at the lowest level C, 26 at level B and 7 at level A, the highest level of seriousness.

Mr Slater said police viewed 70 DVDs which were found to have extreme pornography on them involving adult women and animals.

When first interviewed Carter said he used his laptop to view pornography but denied items had been brought from his work.

He later claimed the images found must have been bought by him from a stall in Huddersfield market which was where the got his adult pornography from.

Grey-haired Carter, 50, admitted two charges of theft, two of making indecent images, two of possessing indecent images and possessing extreme pornography.

The judge said he accepted Carter had been suffering depression and other emotional stress while caring for his mother in the last year’s of her life but the majority of people in that situation did not resort to such offending.

The judge said he had also read references showing his positive good character and the impact a jail term would have on his wife, but there had to be an immediate prison sentence.