A SCHOOL teaching assistant was found with 239 child porn images on his computer, a court was told.

Police found the images when they raided David Stott's home in Westgate, Burnley.

A judge at Preston Crown Court said that Stott, 20, had led officers on a "merry dance" with "excuses" over why the material had been there.

Stott, who worked for the IT department of a local high school which was not named in court, pleaded guilty to seven charges of making indecent images of children and one of possessing them.

He was given a sixth-month suspended term of youth custody and banned from accessing any type of pornographic material from the internet for five years.

Louise Waites, prosecuting, said a laptop was seized from Stott's bedroom and found to contain indecent images of children. Titles like "Naked Boys" and "Free Gay Boys" were said to have been found.

Miss Waites said the vast majority were of the two least serious categories of images.

They had been downloaded on different dates, directly from the internet, the court heard.

Miss Waites said he was interviewed by police on a number of occasions and claimed to have received unsolicited material from adult porn sites. Stott told officers he had no sexual interest in children and was attracted to men "a bit" older than himself.

He also said to police that he searched gay porn sites, but when challenged with a technical report, could not explain how some of the images had got onto the computer.

Stott, now said to be living in Preston and doing a computer degree course at university, had now started a "fresh life", Ian Whitehurst, defending, said. He added: "The defendant is aware these offences are serious, un-pleasant offences.

"He wishes to put the incident behind him. It has created great discord with himself and his family."

As well as the suspended sentence, Stott was told to enrol on the internet sex offenders' treatment programme.

He was also banned from working with children and put on the sex offenders' register for five years.

Judge Stuart Baker said the images were of children who had been "cynically abused" for commercial profit.

He said: "Sometimes people refer to these images as being virtual.

"There is nothing virtual about it at all. These are real children and they have been seriously abused by adults."