A PROBATION expert hired to help set up a database of sex offenders was yesterday jailed for distributing child pornography.

Vince Barron, 50, was jailed for two years and nine months by Durham Crown Court for sending indecent images of children to at least 21 members of internet chatrooms, with whom he swapped sex fantasies.

By day, Barron was on secondment to the Home Office, using his expertise in such offending.

By night, he was sending hundreds of pictures of children being sexually abused from his computer at home in Kirk Rise, Frosterley, County Durham.

The probation service manager's activities came to light when police found some of the images on the computer of a man in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

Barron sent ten images to that man, but it only "scratched the surface", of the extent of his offending.

In January last year, he was jailed for 14 months for those offences, but successfully appealed against his sentence and was released having only served three months behind bars. The jail term was replaced with a community order to include a sex offenders' treatment programme.

Simon Reevell, prosecuting, said it was only when the Scottish inquiry was completed that Durham Police could closely examine Barron's computer.

It contained 3,800 indecent child images, with several hundred in the most serious categories.

He admitted 21 counts of distributing indecent photographs of a child and one of possession of 3,800 such images.

Robin Patton, in mitigation, said Barron had lost his high-flying career and good name, and had shamed his family.

He said: "He has fallen from grace spectacularly. He has already fallen about as far as anybody could fall.

"He is isolated and shunned by neighbours and he has very little prospect of gaining employment at a level he was used to."

Jailing the former assistant chief officer of Northumbria Probation Service, Judge Richard Lowden said he had wrecked a fine career of public service.

He said: "These images show children being abused, and anything that encourages this type of offending is abhorrent.

"You held a position trusted by society to stop this type of behaviour and not indulge in it."

Barron was also placed on the sex offenders' register for life and banned from working with children indefinitely.

3:03am Saturday 17th May 2008

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