A BARRISTER from the North-East has been jailed for two years and eight months for downloading child porn featuring girls as young as ten months old.

John Temple, who took up the law after his police career ended when he was beaten up by car thieves, admitted 34 counts of possessing and distributing child pornography.

Judge Henry Globe, the Recorder of Liverpool, told the 46-year-old: "It is obvious that the victims have been unwilling participants and are bound to have been physically and emotionally traumatised by the events."

Police examined Temple's computer and found 3,769 images, which featured girls aged ten months to 11 years old, on the hard drive, zip drive and also on 60 disks, Liverpool Crown Court was told.

Some had been deleted but many had been viewed several times.

About two-thirds of his collection was graded as the least serious level of paedophiliac images, but 382 were level four and five, the two most serious types.

Temple's activities were discovered after Devon and Cornwall Police, working on the national Operation Ore, discovered a computer that had been used as part of a paedophile network.

One pseudonym on the network was "Rudisrevenge" and investigations revealed it to be Temple's.

Officers raided his home at Satley, near Lanchester, County Durham, and seized his computer in March last year.

They also found that he had distributed 491 images to other members of a 1,300-strong paedophile ring.

Prosecution barrister Damian Nolan said that Temple, a criminal barrister, told police he "knew it was a crime but did not give it any thought".

Temple, who is married and has four children, suffered serious head injuries when, as a policeman, he was badly beaten up by suspected car thieves on North Tyneside, in 1992, and was forced to retire from the Northumbria force.

Temple, who had also served with the North Yorkshire force, became a barrister in 1998 and worked at the Durham Barristers' Chambers, close to the city's Crown Court.

In one case, he represented a man convicted of possessing and taking indecent pictures of children who, at appeal, had his sentence cut from eight years to three.

Defence barrister Robert Woodcock described Temple as a ruined man.

He said he had been a "diligent and hard-working" police officer and a barrister who showed "enormous effort and obvious pride in his work".

He added: "Every career that this man has pursued is in tatters."

He received concurrent sentences of two years for possession of specified indecent images of children, two years and eight months for distributing indecent images and two years for possession of a further 3,753 indecent images.

He has been suspended by the Bar Council and is likely to be disbarred.

The judge said that Temple's brain injury did not cause his use of child porn, but had been a factor in his emotional problems, which included gambling and alcohol.

He said: "There is no direct causal link between the injuries and your offending.

"That said, I note the surrounding difficulties that the incident has caused for you and your family in the years since it occurred."

Detective Sergeant Keith Gilfillan, of Durham Police's vulnerability unit, said outside court: "With his experience as a police officer and a barrister, Temple may have thought that he knew enough not to be caught and could make himself above the law.

"Today's sentence shows that he is not above the law and neither is anyone else, regardless of social standing or profession."