Ava's dad was an online child sex offender. She was left alone to struggle after she found out

Ava was heading home from Pizza Hut when she found out her dad had been arrested.  Warning: This article includes references to indecent images of children and suicide that some readers may find distressing It had been "a really good evening" celebrating her brother's birthday.  Ava (not her real name) was just 13, and her brother several years younger.

Their parents had divorced a few years earlier and they were living with their mum.  Suddenly Ava's mum, sitting in the front car seat next to her new boyfriend, got a phone call.   "She answered the phone and it was the police," Ava remembers.   "I think they realised that there were children in the back so they kept it very minimal, but I could hear them speaking."   "I was so scared," she says, as she overheard about his arrest.  "I was panicking loads because my dad actually used to do a lot of speeding and I was like: 'Oh no, he's been caught speeding, he's going to get in trouble.'"  But Ava wasn't told what had really happened until many weeks later, even though things changed immediately.  "We found out that we weren't going to be able to see our dad for, well we didn't know how long for - but we weren't allowed to see him, or even speak to him. I couldn't text him or anything.

I was just wondering what was going on, I didn't know. I didn't understand."  Ava's dad, John, had been arrested for looking at indecent images of children online.  We hear this first-hand from John (not his real name), who we interviewed separately from Ava.  What he told us about his offending was, of course, difficult to hear.

His offending went on for several years, looking at indecent images and videos of young children. His own daughter told us she was "repulsed" by what he did.

But John wanted to speak to us, frankly and honestly. He told us he was "sorry" for what he had done, and that it was only after counselling that he realised the "actual impact on the people in the images" of his crime.

By sharing his story, he hopes to try to stop other people doing what he did and raise awareness about the impact this type of offence has - on everyone involved, including his unsuspecting family. John tells us he'd been looking at indecent images and videos of children since 2013.  "I was on the internet, on a chat site," he says.

"Someone sent a link. I opened it, and that's what it was.

"Then more people started sending links and it just kind of gathered pace from there really. It kind of sucks you in without you even realising it.

And it becomes almost like a drug, to, you know, get your next fix."  John says he got a "sexual kick" from looking at the images and claims "at the time, when you're doing it, you don't realise how wrong it is". 'I told them exactly what they would find' At the point of his arrest, John had around 1,000 indecent images and videos of children on his laptop - some were Category A, the most severe.  Referencing the counselling that he since received, John says he believes the abuse he received as a child affected the way he initially perceived what he was doing.

"I had this thing in my mind," he says, "that the kids in these were enjoying it." "Unfortunately, [that] was the way that my brain was wired up" and "I'm not proud of it.