A 21-YEAR-OLD Bexleyheath man who downloaded hundreds of "revolting" child porn images onto a computer kept at his grandmother’s house has walked free from court.

Christopher Arno kept 874 pictures and videos on the device’s hard drive, including more than 200 at the two highest levels of severity.

He pleaded guilty to 13 counts of making indecent images earlier this year.

Prosecutor Peter Lancaster told Southwark Crown Court: "He said it was just something he did to pass the time and he did not know why he did it."

Arno was arrested in May after officers raided the home he shares with his grandmother in Birchington Close, and seized his computer.

The court heard the collection of photos and films featured children as young as 10 years old.

Yesterday(November 23) Judge Alistair McCreath gave Arno a 12-month community order with full probation supervision throughout that period and ordered he attend an internet sexual offending specified programme.

He said: "These images are not just of harm done to children but they are in themselves revolting and right thinking people are themselves revolted."

He added: "The difficulty I have is the prison sentence I could pass would be really short and at the end of it you would come out of prison, I have no doubt at all, worse than you went in the sense that you would end up spending time, almost certainly, with paedophiles and sex offenders.

"And, if there’s one guaranteed way of making a 21-year-old worse it’s by locking you up for a few weeks with other people who are of that nature."

Arno was also given a five year sexual offences prevention order banning him from accessing the internet on a device unable to record the history of websites visited, and banning him from deleting the internet history.