A warehouseman who spent hours combing the internet for the worst child porn pictures imaginable was spared jail by a judge last week after he had blamed a troubled childhood...

A warehouseman who spent hours combing the internet for the worst child porn pictures imaginable was spared jail by a judge last week after he had blamed a troubled childhood.

Mark Stockall, 40, of Mandalay House on the Burma Court estate in Stoke Newington, browsed free porn websites and downloaded films including one called Paedo Land.

However, the father-of-one escaped an immediate prison sentence after the judge at Southwark Crown Court said he had not "encouraged the abuse of children by paying for his sick gallery".

Judge Christopher Hardy told him: "These images were downloaded for your own perverted satisfaction in the privacy of your own room and, importantly, it doesn't seem to me that you gave any financial benefit to those people who make these images."

He added: "There isn't any evidence of you paying for these images by credit cards or any other means, which quite clearly goes to encourage abuse of children in these circumstances.

Judge Hardy passed a nine-month suspended sentence and said although the images were "revolting" he did not consider Stockall a danger to society..

Stockall was caught after police tracked down his user details from a list of names regularly entering the porn site in May last year.

A search warrant was issued and on seeing the officers at his front door Stockall immediately confessed and said he had logged on to websites to swap pictures with other perverts.

His computer was seized and police found hundreds of images stored on the hard drive.

Stockall's elderly mother sobbed in the public gallery as she heard that her son would spend hours surfing the web for images which depicted children being raped by adults and animals.

Stockall, who pleaded guilty to 12 counts of making indecent photographs of children, was ordered to comply with a community supervision order for three years and put on the sex offenders' register.

He was also given a sexual offences prevention order and told to pay £400 costs.