Child images man will not go to jail; HE TOLD POLICE HE FOUND THE PICTURES 'TITILATING'.

Byline: HELENA MARKOVIC

A KENILWORTH businessman who downloaded images of children posing naked and told police he found them "titillating" has been spared a jail term.

Warwick Crown Court heard that Nicholas Charlton, 58, of Mountbatten Avenue, claimed he did not consider the images to be pornographic, despite having downloaded others of youngsters being sexually abused by adults.

Charlton, who runs a property management company from his home, admitted 10 charges of making indecent photographs of children and one of possessing 254 indecent images of children.

Although Recorder David Jones said seven of the images "would push this offence into a custodial sentence" he was given a three year community rehabilitation order with conditions he did not seek unsupervised contact with children without the consent of his probation officer, or engage in paid or unpaid work with youngsters.

He was also ordered to take part in a sex offender programme, register as a sex offender, pay pounds 578 costs and forfeit his computer.

Charlton's home was raided last April as a result of a US investigation of customers who had given credit card details to a child pornography site.

Warwickshire police found 161 saved images on his hard drive and 93 deleted images, which the officers were able to recover.

The majority were of level one, showing children in erotic poses with no sexual activity.

But one image was of level four showing penetrative sex between adults and children and one was level five.

Recorder Jones said a custodial sentence was not necessary because Charlton had been deeply humiliated and shamed by his actions.

He told Charlton: "What you do in downloading the pictures is not a direct abuse of the children because it has already taken place, but you create a market for it that positively encourages the pornographer, the one who is actually abusing these children, to do it more and more."