A FORMER aide to Prime Minister David Cameron avoided jail yesterday after being convicted of downloading pictures of scantily clad girls as young as 10 in sexual poses.

Patrick Rock of Fulham, south-west London, who faced 20 charges of making indecent photographs of children, had claimed the images he downloaded on to his iPad over three days in August 2013 were not indecent.

But the jury in his trial at Southwark Crown Court in London rejected his claim and convicted him by majority verdict of five counts.

Rock was acquitted of three similar charges, while jurors were unable to agree on the 12 remaining counts and were discharged, meaning the charges will lie on file.

The court heard that the youngest of the girls in the pictures was aged just 10 years and four months when Rock downloaded the image — meaning she would have been younger when it was taken.

Judge Alistair McCreath sentenced Rock to a two-year conditional discharge on each count, to run concurrently.

The judge said: “I have not lost sight of the obvious reality that right-thinking people will quite properly consider that those who did what you did should be punished for it.

“You should be. And you have been.

“The punishment for you is the loss of your reputation and your very public humiliation.

“It is a punishment which you brought on yourself, but is nonetheless a very real one. And it is one that is utterly merited.”

Judge McCreath, the Recorder of Westminster, added that his sentence did not amount to “any sort of excusing of, conformation of or trivialising of this sort of offending.”