A GENERAL MANAGER at the Royal College of Physicians has appeared in court to be sentenced for downloading child pornography.

Nicholas Grant, 52, of Tyler Hill Road, Blean, near Canterbury, admitted 24 charges of making indecent images of children between January 2002 and June 2004.

Grant was made the subject of a three-year community rehabilitation order with a condition he attends the Thames Valley Sex Offenders Treatment Programme. He must be on the Sex Offenders’ Register for five years and must also pay £700 costs.

Police went to his home and recovered computer equipment, including a laptop and a Filofax containing eight black and white images of young girls exposing themselves.

Dominic Webber, prosecuting, told Canterbury Crown Court that officers also searched Grant’s computer at the Royal College of Physicians where he worked as a general manager at the Joint Committee for Higher Medical Training in London.

“They found possibly 718 images of which many had been deleted but 132 were still "live".

On a hard drive were 300 images at level one, three at level two, four at level four and one at level five, the most serious category.

Grant used an Egg credit card to make three subscriptions to various sites and downloaded numerous images on his home computer.

“He was unsure why he did it, but enjoyed looking at such images, girls in particular aged between eight and 12," said Mr Webber.

At one time he had 200 images on his computer but became disgusted with himself and tried unsuccessfully to delete them.

He admitted that a number of them were stored on floppy disks at the Royal College of Physicians.

Fiona Moore-Graham, for Grant, who had no previous convictions, pointed to documents before the court from people Grant worked with at the Royal College and Judge Timothy Nash remarked: “He comes with the best references I have seen for a long time, which is the greater the tragedy”.

Sentencing Grant, Judge Nash said in behaving as he did, he acknowledged the evil of his thoughts and actions.

“The trouble with this material is that those who have to take part in the photographs are subject to the most terrible abuse. You have brought great shame on yourself, on your wife and family and on the Royal College of Physicians, which is quite unforgivable.

“You had and still have a problem but I am satisfied you are motivated to overcome it, but any treatment must be properly supervised”, added the judge.