A FORMER St John Ambulance volunteer who downloaded explicit child porn from the internet has escaped a jail sentence.

Burnley Crown Court heard how James Thornber, 51, committed the offence some time ago and a judge said the defendant may not have realised what he was doing was so serious.

Judge Raymond Bennett told Thornber, currently receiving treatment at Burnley General Hospital, that while people were prepared to download obscene images of youngsters, children would be abused to create them.

He told the defendant: "While it may have seemed to you not a terribly serious thing to do, I am sure if you thought about the situation people like you are creating, of children being abused, you would have thought differently."

Judge Bennett said he was sure Thornber, father of a young daughter, had been a perfectly responsible member of society in other ways and it was sad to see him in the dock.

He added the number of "really nasty," indecent pictures Thornber downloaded was quite small and it was not suggested Thornber had been looking at them in the last three years.

The defendant, of Sheridan Street, Nelson, was given a 12 months community rehabilitation order with conditions.

He was ordered to address his sexual offending behaviour by both individual and group work and not to live in a household with children under 18 without the permission of the social services or his supervising officer.

Thornber was also banned from engaging in paid or unpaid activities likely to bring him into contact with children under 18.

He had earlier admitted five specimen allegations of making indecent photos of a child. Thornber had been committed for sentence by the Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Magistrates.

The court had earlier been told how the defendant admitted trawling the internet for pre-teen websites but claimed the pictures were more artistic than pornographic.

Jeremy Grout-Smith, prosecuting, said officers went to the defendant's home last November and seized his computer and some floppy discs. They found child porn, six pictures of which were of the most explicit form. Officers also recovered from the computer a number of files which had been deleted.

Among the 90 obscene images were two showing children being sexually abused. The prosecutor said when arrested, the defendant admitted using his credit card to download child porn from the internet around the end of 1999.