A YORK computer programmer has escaped a prison sentence after police found child porn he had imported from the US.

Defence barrister Nicholas Johnson told York Crown Court that James Andrew Huntsman, 35, had had no idea that when he took a computer hard-drive without permission from his former employers in North Carolina, it had 712 sexual images of children including 59 of men having sex or hard-core sexual contact with youngsters.

Back in the UK, he discovered the porn, then, in a panic, relabelled the file to make it look as though it was not a picture file, so that others could not find it. He had decided not to destroy it for technical reasons.

But the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, told him: "I don't believe your explanation. I don't believe a word of it. You preserved it for your own future purposes."

He added that he would have jailed Huntsman if he had accessed the child porn after hiding it.

Instead he ordered him to perform 200 hours' community punishment and pay £962 prosecution costs, plus all his own court costs. He must also register as a sex offender for five years and his computer will be destroyed.

Huntsman, of Richardson Street, Clementhorpe, pleaded guilty to possessing child porn.

Jonathan Carroll, prosecuting, said that police raided Huntsman's home on December 9, 2002.

They seized a Dell computer with two disc drives, and found the images under a file labelled .dll, a computer file type not normally used for data storage. Most of the child porn was rated levels one to three on the usual scale for child porn, but 59 were on the higher level four.

Mr Johnson said Huntsman worked for Q Systems in Charlotte, North Carolina, for three months in 1999. He spotted computer spares which had seemed abandoned in a box and took some to upgrade his own computer, including the hard drive. He had been nave and foolish.

Updated: 10:49 Tuesday, April 06, 2004