A CONVICTED paedophile used a Hampshire library computer to leer at child pornography.

Christopher Penfold, 50, was caught viewing indecent images of children on one of the ten public computers at Ringwood library.

He was spotted by a library user one weekday morning, Southampton Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Adam Hiddleston said police were called to the library in Christchurch Road where they arrested Penfold.

Mr Hiddleston said when he was searched he was found with five recordable CDs which were sent away for analysis. Two of them contained photos of semi-clothed children, aged 12 or 13, in sexual poses.

When police searched Penfold's council home, which he shared with his father, they found another CD containing a movie showing teenage boys at a swimming gala and contained footage of them naked in the showers and changing rooms.

When interviewed by police Penfold again claimed he "didn't believe the images were indecent", then made no further comment.

Penfold was charged with 23 counts of possessing indecent images.

He pleaded guilty to three of the counts, relating to two pictures and one video.

The court heard Penfold lived on benefits while caring for his father.

Recorder Susan Evans told Penfold the pictures "were plainly indecent" but said they were a "small amount of material at level one of the scale", the lowest obscenity rating.

She fined him a total of £500, entered a formal not guilty plea to 16 of the charges and let four of them lie on his file, warning him they could be revived.

Penfold, of Winston Way, Ringwood, will be placed on the sex offender register for five years.

The court heard he had a previous conviction for indecently assaulting a boy under 16 in 1998, when he got a three-year probation order.

A spokeswoman for Hampshire County Council said Penfold had not downloaded the images on the computer but was using it to view images already contained on his own CDs.

She added: "It is extremely rare that any pornographic material could be accessed in libraries.

"If an individual is caught looking at pornographic material then they would be have their Internet user rights taken away."

The Hampshire public logged on to the Internet 937,000 times across the county's 54 libraries last year.