A FORMER teacher at a top Lancashire public school has been jailed for six months for downloading child internet porn.

Christopher Score was trapped by a police operation called Shutdown, linked to an FBI investigation called Ore, which targeted forms of child pornography on websites.

The former Stonyhurst College, Hurst Green, teacher was told by a judge sending him to prison "There was a difference between your public face as an upstanding member of your community and what you were doing at night, huddled over your computer".

Score, 54, of Water Street, Ribchester, pleaded guilty to five charges of making an indecent photograph of a child and one of possessing indecent photographs of children, on April 25 this year. They were specimen charges.

Mr Mark Stuart, prosecuting, said the defendant had used his credit card to access such material. In April this year a number of officers went to his house, arrested Score and took away items from his house, including his computer and discs.

These were subsequently analysed and found to contain around 590 indecent images, he said.

The vast majority, 551 images, were of the least serious category, known as level one. Another three images were level two, ten level three and twenty six images the more serious level four.

Mr Simon Newell, defending, said that for many years Score had been a competent and well respected teacher.

After the case, Jonathan Hewat, marketing and administration manager at Stonyhurst College said: "Mr Score worked at the school as head of modern languages between 1987 to 1993 before the internet was around. Therefore as far as we are aware the allegations relate to a time after he was with us at Stonyhurst."