COMPUTER expert Michael Yorke has escaped a prison sentence for downloading child pornography from the internet.

The 63-year-old had hundreds of images of youngsters after he paid to get access to the depraved material.

But a judge at Swindon Crown Court decided not to jail the grandfather and instead ordered he must complete a sex offender's programme and a three-year community rehabilitation order.

Martin Lanchester, prosecuting, said police became aware of Yorke following investigations in America into the Landslide Productions website.

On three occasions he said Yorke had used a credit card to buy access to the site on the internet through the company.

He said the police raided his home, where he also worked restoring and repairing computers, and seized a number of machines and storage media.

When Yorke was questioned he admitted to police that he had subscribed to the illicit website three times over eight days in 1999.

But he said that he thought he had deleted all of the pictures and that the spaces on the computers' memories would have been overwritten a number of times.

Yorke told the police that he was "undertaking a project to see what level of pornography existed", Mr Lanchester said.

He also told the police that he didn't realise it was against the law to look at it, thinking it was only the transmission which was illegal.

Mr Lanchester told the court that when specialist software was used by the police they managed to recover hundreds of images, as well as some movies.

He said they found 185 pictures and movies but accepted that some were duplicates from different computers.

Investigators also found he had entered a number of terms like "Lolita's world" and "Russian pre-teens" into search engines.

Yorke, of Manor Orchard, Cricklade, pleaded guilty to four counts of making indecent images of children and one of possession.

Marcus Davey, defending, said that his client was sorry for what he had done so foolishly seven years ago.

He said that he had paid for and looked at the material over a brief period in 1999 and soon after realised it was wrong and tried to erase it all.

"In 2000 he makes it clear he thought he had deleted it. He did that because he realised the stupidity of what he had done," he said.

Passing sentence, Judge Tom Longbotham said: "In my judgment you are on the cusp of going to prison. The question is whether it is necessary to send you to prison today. I have come to the conclusion that it is not necessary to do so."

He also ordered he pay £135 costs and register as a sex offender. Yorke's computers, which were seized, will also be forfeited and destroyed.