A Corsham man caught with sickening child sex images on his computer has walked free from court.

Stephen Dowle claimed he was being blackmailed by a former girlfriend's partner when police confronted him with the evidence.

But on the morning of his trial at Swindon Crown Court the 46-year-old admitted four charges of possessing indecent images of children, which included a sadomasochistic video.

Ian Halliday, prosecuting, told the court that Dowle, now of Castle Street, Calne, was in a relationship with a woman called Jane Robinson in the year 2000.

He said that she moved in with him at his home, which was then on Glebe Way, Corsham, but soon moved out after the couple split up. "After she moved out they kept in regular contact and she would take her children to his home and leave them in his care," he said.

"She had a store of toys kept there and in clearing them up one evening she appears to have placed into her toy box a folder containing a CD Rom."

It was not until six months later in late 2001 that her new partner discovered the disc.

Out of curiosity and thinking the disc may contain music he passed the CD to a friend to find out what was on it, only to discover it contained child sex images.

"It was passed to the police and in a file marked 'my pictures' they found the images of naked girls."

"In another folder marked 'letters' they found a number of items of personal correspondence, hence the link was formed.

"In April 2002 he was arrested at his work, was cautioned, and almost immediately indicated that he was being blackmailed over these images, being 'stitched up,' to use his words.

"He said the man had threatened him in various ways. When police searched his home in Silman Close they found a computer which was found to have three video clips on it."

Mr Halliday told the court that one of the videos was of the most serious kind and depicted sadomasochistic images.

He said there were a total of 11 indecent pictures of children on the disc but only one had been charged as a specimen count. Dowle maintained that he had no knowledge of the creation of the images, until the morning of the trial when he admitted four counts on the 12 count indictment. Not guilty verdicts were recorded against the remaining charges.

Adrian Maxwell, defending, said that the case was the culmination of a spectacular fall from grace for his client.

"This defendant has undergone a quite incredible descent from a position of very high responsibility that he once enjoyed," he said.

Passing a three-year probation order Judge John McNaught told Dowle that he would have to complete a sex offenders' programme and register as a sex offender for the next five years.