A PERVERT'S hand shown in child pornography photos was identified by a top doctor, a court was told yesterday.

Home Office pathologist James Sunter was brought in by police after they raided the home of Peter Hindmarch, 43, and seized his digital camera and computer.

Shaun Dodds, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court that three of the 500 photographs on the seized computer showed Hindmarch's badly scarred hand.

Dr Sunter, a veteran of scores of murder cases, was shown the shots and also a police picture of Hindmarch's hand and said the scarring was the same.

The court heard that another nine pornographic images were found on Hindmarch's digital camera.

The raid by Cleveland Police last October was part of Operation Ore, an investigation sparked by the FBI, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Martina Connolly, defending, said: "He accepts he has a problem and that a custodial sentence in inevitable.

"His guilty plea saved his family an even greater distress, they have already been torn apart in dealing with it. He has come to terms with his own weaknesses.

"He said it was curiosity initially which developed into something more serious."

Hindmarch, of Ivy Grove, Hartlepool, was jailed for four years and ordered to register as a sex offender for life after he pleaded guilty to 16 offences of making indecent images of children, two of taking indecent photographs of a child and indecently assaulting a young girl.

He must also attend a sex offenders' treatment programme during an extended four-year prison sentence.