A FORMER Malvern Hills councillor has been found guilty of downloading sickening child porn on to a council laptop.

Michael Angell has now been ordered to sign the sex offender's register after being convicted of 12 of 17 charges relating to the making and downloading of indecent images of children.

However, the jury decided Angell was not guilty on five charges of making indecent photographs of children.

Judge David McEvoy QC said: "Michael Angell, you have heard the guilty verdicts which were, in my view, inevitable because of the subject of issue in the photographs and appearance of age."

It took the 12 members of the jury just over an hour to reach their verdicts following a 60-minute summary by the judge at Hereford Crown Court this morning.

During that time Angell, 61, showed no emotion as he sat in the dock, only moving to sip water from a plastic cup.

The court was reminded how suspicion was aroused about Angell's inappropriate use of the internet when he handed a computer over to the authority's technicians to be repaired.

Images found on it caused officials to contact police who then seized a replacement laptop from a study at Angell's home in King Edward's Road, Malvern.

Expert analysis showed Angell, a former deputy mayor of Malvern Town Council, had used the replacement computer to access child porn sites just after 8am and 3pm on Thursday, November 15, 2006.

Images were found of under-age girls posing erotically and sexually. Images had also been found on the original laptop - provided by the council for his committee work - but experts were not able to identify any specific user activity because repair work had been carried out on it before it was seized by police.

Angell claimed the images had "flashed up" on his screen as 'pop-ups' and that his computer had a virus.

But this was questionned by computer experts who pointed to evidence showing key words had been typed in to a search engine to find child porn sites.

The judge also reminded the court that Angell had deleted traces of his internet activity.

Angell had refused to give evidence during the trial, claiming he could not remember what had happened and did not have very much to say.

The case was adjourned for pre-sentence reports to be prepared and Angell was released on conditional bail.

He is expected to appear in court in about three weeks time for sentencing.