A child porn offender from Selby was today starting a four-month prison sentence.

Martin Shergold was jailed at Hull Crown Court after Judge Peter Mettyear said that abusers drew encouragement from people like Shergold who logged on to pornographic internet sites.

The court heard that police found 466 images of children and adults engaged in sexual acts on Shergold's personal computer.

He had downloaded the pornographic photographs from the Internet.

Armed with a search warrant, detectives raided Shergold's home in Palmer Grove, Selby, on August 23 last year, said Robert Terry, QC, prosecuting.

They seized the PC and found behind a list of e-mails an image of a young girl having sexual intercourse with an adult male.

Further examinations of the computer revealed a further 466 images of a similar nature, all created within the space of two days.

Mr Terry said the images were of children involved in sexual acts with other children or adults either with the same or opposite gender, and in various states of nudity.

Shergold, a 51-year-old married man, had pleaded guilty at Selby Magistrates in December to three charges of making indecent photographs of children and three charges of possessing indecent photographs of children.

Hull Crown Court heard that Shergold had now resigned from his post as an auditor in the Lord Chancellor's department in Leeds, where he worked for 30 years.

David Bradshaw, QC, defending, said his client would now be registered as a sex offender and his career had gone. He said Shergold had looked at the images on Internet pages, but there was no commercial gain or dissemination to anyone else.

Updated: 17:19 Monday, February 12, 2001