A MAN caught with indecent images of children and extreme pornography told police his computer had been hacked.

Michael Libbey, 62, eventually confessed to downloading the pictures and walked free from court with a suspended prison sentence.

Officers got a warrant to search his home in east Cleveland after colleagues in the North Yorkshire force tipped them off that a computer there had been used to access illegal sites.

A total of 22 indecent images of children – some aged as young as five – and the pictures of animal sex were found on the Acer lap-top.

Andrew Turton, mitigating, told Teesside Crown Court yesterday that the files had been deleted, were inaccessible at the time and were retrieved "from the back of beyond" by experts.

He said Libbey was prepared to work with the Probation Service to address his problems, and since his arrest in November 2016, the stress of the case has added to his already numerous health problems.

Judge Peter Armstrong imposed a four-month sentence, which he suspended for two years, and ordered Libbey to go on a sex offender treatment programme and take part in 20 rehabilitation activity sessions.

Judge Armstrong also passed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order which will restrict Libbey's use of computers and the internet for the next seven years, and put him on the sex offenders' register for the same length of time.

Libbey, of Abingdon Road, Easington, near Saltburn, admitted two charges of making indecent images of children and one of possessing extreme pornography as he was due to go on trial.

Rachel Masters, prosecuting, told the court: "He immediately said he had been hacked over the previous year, and repeated the claim in interview, and said it had popped up on his device."