A MAN who had nearly 700 indecent images of children on his computer escaped a prison sentence yesterday.

Francis William Mingay was arrested after a police raid at his home, in Southgate Avenue, Ripon, North Yorkshire, on December 7 as part of Operation Ore, a trans-Atlantic investigation into Internet child pornography.

Alex Wolfson, prosecuting, told Harrogate Magistrates' Court that Mingay's name was one of a number passed to North Yorkshire Police.

He told police he could not remember subscribing to American-based Internet porn sites and did not believe there were any indecent photographs stored on his computer.

But he admitted later that there were indecent adult images.

Mr Wolfson said that an examination of the equipment seized revealed 691 indecent images of children. Most of them were stored on five CD ROMs.

Three of the images had been identified as level four on a scale of one to five of abuse and seven were categorised at level three. The vast majority were at the lower end of the scale.

Mingay pleaded guilty to ten charges of making an indecent photograph of a child at Ripon between March 1999 and December last year and one of possession of indecent photographs.

In mitigation, Geoffrey Rogers said Mingay had not done anything other than download the pictures and no one else had seen them. Of the 691 seized, 654 were at the lowest level.

He said jailing Mingay would cost him his job as a driver.

Mr Rogers said: ''It came as a huge shock to find the police knocking on his door."

Putting Mingay on probation for three years, court chairman Pam Henderson told him he had been very close to going to prison but his previous good character had helped to save him.

He was ordered to be put on the sex offenders' register for five years and pay £125 costs.