A Warwickshire priest who searched the internet for "homosexual fantasy stories about incest and child sex" has walked free from court. Father Anthony Jones used a computer at St Peter the Apostle Church, in Dormer Place, Leamington, to view an image of an older person having sex with a boy aged about 14.

Jones was handed a conditional discharge at Warwick Crown Court yesterday after admitting three charges of making indecent images. A further 14 charges were ordered to lie on file. The 57-year-old was also ordered to register as a sex offender and pay pounds 982 costs.

The three admitted charges related to two "level one" pictures of naked boys, and one picture found on the Leamington machine of an older person having sex with a teenager of about 14.

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Gerard Quirke, defending, said many of the images in the original charges had been within banner images over which the person accessing a site had no control.

He said: "This man is a gay man. He is prevented from expressing his homosexuality with another man so, because he is flesh and blood like the rest of us, in order to gratify himself he has gone on to the computer looking for adult homosexual images."

He said when searching for gay pornography, there was a danger that an image would appear of someone aged under 18. And Mr Quirke said for three images, an offender would normally be cautioned. But he added: "It did not happen in this case. One does not know why, although one can guess. If this man were not a Catholic priest, it would never have come out of the police station."