A FORMER soldier has been spared jail despite having hundreds of images of child pornography on his computers.

Police found the pictures when they were investigating Kevin Fuller for an offence of money laundering in 2004.

Searches of two computers revealed a total of 1,290 indecent images of children among thousands of what was described as "vintage" adult porn.

Fuller, 50, told police he was trying to set up a website business dealing in Victorian pornography and had been sent the pictures of children.

He accepted he should have deleted them from his computer, but insisted he did not get any sexual gratification from the images.

Fuller, of Prospect View, Northallerton, was sentenced at Teesside Crown Court yesterday after admitting two specimen charges of possessing indecent images of children.

He was put on a two-year community rehabilitation order with a condition that he completes a sex offenders' treatment programme and signs on the sex offenders' register.

Judge Peter Armstrong also ordered that Fuller should not try to download any indecent images of under-16s or any material from the Internet, other than in the course of employment or study.

Fuller, who is now unemployed, was said to have had exemplary lengthy service in the Army, but was jailed for money laundering last July.

Rupert Dodswell, prosecuting, said most of the images were found when police were investigating his financial dealings.

A further search of a computer three months later revealed about 400 more.

James Kemp, mitigating, said: "This is a man who perhaps entered what is now quite a dangerous world - that of pornography and the Internet - and attempted to set up an erotic website angling on vintage photographs.

"While obtaining these pictures, unwittingly, he was sent material such as this. He just didn't delete them within the period of time he should have done."

Judge Armstrong said: "Those delving into this realm run the risk of ending up with indecent images of children on their computers.

"The trouble with them is that it involves real children being really and actually abused, and those who continue to download these, things simply continue the trade in the abuse of children."