A KIDDERMINSTER man who downloaded child porn from the internet was caught after a nationwide alert by New Scotland Yard.

An intelligence report was passed to local police who arrested Andrew Woodward and found he had stored 177 still images on disk and nine movie clips, Worcester Crown Court heard.

The pictures had been catalogued and labelled, undermining his explanation that he had only innocently "browsed" for pornography, said Paul Whitfield, prosecuting.

Experts who examined the computer hard drive found he had accessed shared sites with more than 1,000 references to a particular word to find material in "an active search".

Woodward, 40, of Upton Road, Kidderminster, pleaded guilty to 14 counts of making indecent photographs of children.

Judge Andrew Geddes told him: "You should understand that you lend support to this hateful trade. Imagine a child of yours going through that experience. You have brought shame on your family."

The judge said it was fortunate for Woodward that most images were at the bottom of the scale and he could, therefore, avoid prison.

He was given a three-year community rehabilitation order with a condition that he attend a sex offenders' course.

He was also ordered to pay £982 court costs and sign the sex offenders' register for five years.

Woodward's home was raided on June 11 by police. He denied accessing child porn but admitted an interest in porn featuring teenagers and adults, said Mr Whitfield.

The child porn was on a shared file which had been paid for by someone else. The perpetrator had not been caught.

Michael Aspinall, defending, said Woodward had last downloaded porn in April, 2003. The "terrible images" were stored on disk but the defendant was not addicted to child porn.

He had not passed the images on and bitterly regretted his crime.