A childminder arrested for alleged child abuse had been collecting child pornography for years, Dutch prosecutors said at a preliminary hearing.

They said that he had collected images on his computers and telephone between November 2015 and May 2023, reports NOS.

The 24-year-old man from Schagen in Noord-Holland had worked as a babysitter for at least 11 families around the country and reportedly advertised his services online via Marktplaats since 2019. He charged far lower fees than most babysitters and reportedly posed in a police uniform, although he has never worked as a police officer.

One child looked after by the man has apparently been identified and the child’s mother has made an official police report. Dutch media report that prosecutors have analysed around 60% of some 21,000 photographs and 3,000 videos with obscene material found on the man’s devices, as well as 3,000 chats and animal pornography.

His lawyer, Carlo Crince Le Roy, told the court that man was incorrectly being framed as a large-scale child abuser, and said that some pictures were not child pornography.

Another man, aged 38 and from nearby Alkmaar, has also been arrested. He is said to be the recipient of some of the footage made by the main suspect. The main suspect will undergo psychological investigation by the Pieter Baan Centre in October and the case continues on November 6.