A MAGISTRATE has told a man convicted of downloading child pornography that if it were not for people like him such images would not be created.

Jason Butler, 38, of Bremeridge Road, Westbury, was sentenced to a three-year community order at Chippenham magistrates' court on Wednesday.

He had previously pleaded guilty to downloading 287 images and eight movies to his home computer.

Prosecuting, Colin Meeke told the court Butler had paid subscriptions to websites and had saved stories about incest with children.

"The computers showed the defendant had used specific terms like 13-year-old, pre-teen and lolita. It is quite a consistent search pattern for child abuse images," he said.

One of the files found on the computer was entitled PTHC, which Mr Meeke said was a well known abbreviation for pre-teen hardcore.

Most of the images were at the lowest level, which depict children in sexual poses, rather than engaged in sexual activity, but three of the movies and one of the pictures were categorised as level four, which can include child rape.

Mr Meeke said Butler had told police he had been searching for 18-year-olds but kept coming up with girls over 20, so he typed in 13-year-olds in the hope of finding 16-year-old girls.

Defending, Stephen Clifford said Butler was genuinely remorseful and that the collection was not as large as in many other cases.

Sentencing him, magistrate Mike Sutton said: "These are serious offences. If people didn't look at these images they wouldn't be created in the first place."

As part of his community order Butler must attend a sex offenders' unit. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for five years and pay £75 costs, while his computer and the images will be destroyed.