A self-employed air conditioning engineer from Baildon admitted 20 charges of possessing indecent photographs of a child after being snared by the police's Operation Ore.

Magistrates in Dewsbury heard yesterday how Michael John Manley, 49, had images of children between the ages of two and 15 in a variety of degrading poses on a number of computer discs.

Bespectacled Manley, who wore a black suit, white shirt and blue tie, spoke only to confirm his name, age and address and to give his guilty plea.

Prosecutor Zaffar Siddique told the court how Manley, a married father-of-two, had been caught by the police's Operation Ore.

This arose after US company Landslide Prod-uctions, a web server provider for countries including Russia and Indonesia, was raided. Manley's credit card details were found on the company's database.

On April 8, police searched Manley's house in Heatherside, Baildon, and seized a laptop computer and compact and floppy discs. When the discs were analysed, police found 46 images depicting indecent photographs of children.

Mr Siddique graded nine of them as level four, three as level two, two as level three and six as level one. Images are graded from one to five, with five being the most serious.

Mike Sisson-Pell, defending Manley, said legislation did not always recognise that somebody could innocently come into contact with pornographic material. He said Manley had gone on to a file-sharing system from which he could download music and software that assisted his business.

"You can be dealing with one particular piece of software and pornography will appear whether you want it to or not," said Mr Sisson-Pell. "He's gone on to this site and the images were there.

"He deleted the vast majority of them but he was experimenting with a new form of software that helped him download material and he downloaded a series of images and materials.

"He knew the images were there and that's where his culpability lies."

He said Mr Manley was not like paedophiles who did not care about their actions or their consequences.

"The trouble is, in the eyes of the public, he may well be tarnished with the same brush as those individuals I have described," he said.

Magistrates downgraded four of the images they viewed to level two and adjourned the case until Wednesday, July 23, for preparation of a pre-sentence report.

Manley was released on unconditional bail.