A MAN jailed yesterday for downloading child pornography from the Internet told the court he had been sexually abused as a child.

Teesside Crown Court was told that John Alexander Smith, 53, had more than 7,000 indecent images of children when police raided his home in Chatham Avenue, Hartlepool.

Smith, a grandfather, said he had been collecting images for five years. He quit his home after his arrest and moved to Tennyson Avenue, in Harrogate.

Shaun Dodds, prosecuting, said Smith told police: "Downloading child pornography was something that got out of hand."

Adrian Strong, defending, said that Smith could identify with the abused children because he was sexually abused as a child.

Mr Strong said: "He has had to live with the shame and that has meant a move from Hartlepool and a change in his job circumstances and putting his future on hold.

"He found the process of going through the probation interview distressing because it brought up old memories."

Judge David Bryant said that an aggravating feature was that Smith had a computer system that allowed other people to download images.

Smith was jailed for a year after he pleaded guilty to 17 child pornography offences between 1998 and last year, and he was ordered to register as a sex offender for ten years.

He was also banned for ten years from working with children and from downloading sexual images from the Internet. His computer and equipment were ordered to be destroyed.