A student has been banned from owning computers after he downloaded child porn on a friend's machine.

Daniel Coulson used a housemate's computer to view pictures and videos of girls as young as six being abused by men.

Coulson, (22), of Glenfield Road, Dane Hills, Leicester, was studying at the University of Reading at the time.

He was sentenced by Reading Crown Court, where he was given a community service order and put on the sex offenders' register after he admitted eight charges of making indecent images in 2006.

The court heard a female friend had allowed him to use her computer while she was out of the house or away at weekends.

One evening in December 2006 she came back to the house and discovered "sex documents" on her laptop which had nothing to do with her.

She then got her friend's boyfriend – a computer network security analyst – to look at her computer and they discovered Coulson had been downloading indecent images, including videos of young girls being sexually abused by adult men.

Eight images were recovered by police.

When confronted by his housemate, Coulson said: "I don't know why I do this. Please don't tell my parents. This is why they took my laptop off me."

When interviewed by police, he also admitted to paying to access fetish sites on the internet.

Coulson has Asperger's syndrome, an autistic disorder.

Paul Walker, defending, told the court it could be partly responsible for Coulson's actions.

He said: "He's shown a great degree of remorse and regret. That being said, he accepts how serious these offences are.

"This is a young man from a good background. He doesn't wish me to use his Asperger's as an excuse, but it may help explain it."

Sentencing him, Judge Stephen John said: "Each image of this kind represents an occasion on which an innocent child has been abused.

"The number of children abused in this way escalates the more someone accesses or downloads images of this kind. This has become much too common.

"For this reason those who have downloaded them should normally go to custody. But I bear very much in mind that these are a tiny number of images overall.

"I'm satisfied that you suffer from Asperger's, which affects the way in which you relate to people around you, but I hope you understand how inappropriate your behaviour was and you have some insight into its effects on other people."

For each of the counts, Coulson was given two-year community orders to run concurrently, with a supervision requirement for two years.

He was placed on the sex offenders' register for five years and banned from owning his own computer or having any contact with a child under the age of 16 without another adult present for three years.