A PERVERT with a fetish for young girl's underwear walked free after a furious judge criticised police for taking so long to bring the case to court.

Judge Michael Taylor said he would have "taken a very different course" had 71-year-old Gordon McKenzie not had to wait 18 months to be dealt with.

Cleveland Police said last night it regretted the delay and said it was due to the "specialist and technical expertise" needed for the investigation.

McKenzie - who has four previous convictions for making and taking indecent photographs of children - was banned from having pictures of kids.

But when police visited his home in Thornaby, near Stockton, they found dozens of images on his mobile telephone and on DVDs in his bedroom.

Teesside Crown Court heard yesterday how he had recorded children's television programmes and taken stills from shows such as CBeebies and Supernanny.

The warped pensioner manipulated the images to focus on the girls' genital areas and kept a collection, prosecutor Sue Jacobs told the court.

When he was arrested, McKenzie told police he had a fetish for young girls' underwear and was attracted to looking at seven- to ten-year-olds.

He was given an absolute discharge after he admitted breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) imposed in 2008 to stop his having kids' pics.

Judge Taylor blasted the police's attitude to SOPOs and said: "It's regrettable that cases like this are not brought to the attention of the court as a matter of great urgency."

He added: "SOPOs are meant to protect the public, and if the police don't get on with it, it perhaps shows their attitude."

Passing the discharge - effectively a let-off - he added: "I do it because of the attitude of the Crown to this offence.

"It seems to me quite poor that there is no degree of urgency displayed about it."It has been hanging over this elderly man's head for far too long. That is why I take the action I do.

"I would have taken a very different course had the matter been brought before the court in weeks, which it should have been."

The court heard how McKenzie has convictions from across the country in 1991, 1995, 2002 and 2008 for making, taking and possessing indecent images.

His lawyer, Graham Brown, said he disputed the pictures taken from the telly were indecent, and added: "They were all things that could be watched by anybody.

"It was those which, of course, had been suborned by the defendant through his own interest, which he has continued to express."

Police searched McKenzie's home in Millfield Close, Thornaby, in September 2011, but he was not interviewed until January 2012.

He was issued with a summons in October 2012 and made his first court appearance the following month.

Detective Chief Inspector Jason Dickson, head of the public protection unit, said: “Investigations of this nature can take a significant period of time due to the technical and specialist expertise that are required.

"Whilst these delays are regrettable, they are not common and all efforts are made to keep such delays to an absolute minimum.

"Throughout the investigation, the defendant was still under the supervision of officers from the public protection unit and was still subject of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order which prohibited him from carrying out certain activities.”