Paedophile Phillip Kirk who wrote a letter to Theresa May asking for sex with children to be legalised is jailed

The judge called his letter a 'deluded and dangerous plea'

A paedophile was caught after he wrote to Home Secretary Theresa May asking for sex with children to be legalised.

As reported by The York Press, 22-year-old Phillip Kirk, who had downloaded more than 1,000 indecent images of children despite being closely watched by police, wrote in the letter: "I have been a paedophile since the age of 13 and openly a paedophile for the last three years."

As well as downloading indecent images of children, police found that Kirk had been searching the internet for child murder cases, and Girl Guide groups in his home city of York. He was arrested on 5 December last year.

In a trial at York Crown Court, Kirk plead guilty to 21 charges of downloading indecent images of children. He was jailed for four years, with another four on probation, with the warning that he would serve the rest of his probation period in prison if he re-offended in that time.

Kirk has previously been jailed for similar crimes. In 2012, he was sent to prison for three years after he broke into a primary school to steal childrens' PE kits. At this trial, at Teesside Crown Court, he plead guilty to making and possessing indecent images and burglary.

As well as the prison sentence, Kirk was put on the sex offenders' register for the rest of his life, was banned from working with children, and banned from coming within 100 metres of any school or a similar gathering place for young people.

He is also banned from having unsupervised contact with anyone under 16, and he will only be able to use the internet on single device, under police supervision.

Detective Inspector Shaun Page, from North Yorkshire Police, welcomed Kirk's conviction, and said he is "one of the most dangerous individuals I am aware of".