A MAN who downloaded indecent pictures of children from the internet but deleted them after three minutes has been placed on the sex offenders register for five years.

Michael Garvey, 41, of Surrey Road, Westbourne, Bournemouth, was also fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £500 in prosecution costs after pleading guilty to one offence of making indecent pictures of children.

Prosecuting at Bournemouth Crown Court on Friday, Hamish Dunlop said a sample file was found on Garvey's computer at his home. On it were 11 "thumbnail" pictures, 10 of which were thought to be indecent.

Mr Dunlop said indecent pictures were graded for the severity of the offence, with one being the lowest and five the highest. One of the images was at grade four, two at grade three, two at grade two and five at grade one.

He added that the find was made after officers swooped on Garvey's home after his e-mail address was on a list released to police as part of the World-wide crackdown on child pornography Operation Ore.

It showed that he had successfully purchased access to a website in July 1999.

But Mr Dunlop said Garvey, who was a computer systems developer, had downloaded the images for which he was charged with at 2.30am on December 8 2002 - five days before police searched his house.

Following a detailed search of two computers which were confiscated, police also found text files which described sexual encounters between children and between children and adults.

A website page from the BBC detailing the Operation Ore initiative was also on Garvey's hard-drive.

Nicholas Paul, mitigating, said it was the defence's submission that the images were downloaded and within three minutes deleted and placed in the computer's recycling bin.

"What we sought to argue then and what we seek to argue today is a very limited element of possession of these pictures," he said.

He added: "It was almost a technical offence in the sense that possession was for such a short duration of time and was followed by the act of deletion."

In sentencing, Judge John Beashel said he took into account Garvey's early guilty plea, the fact he had the case hanging over his head for two years and that the offence was at the "bottom end of the scale".