A FORMER Church of Ireland minister who was living near Shefford was found with a horde of nude pictures of teenagers on his computer which he had downloaded from the internet.

Glenn Milne was already a convicted paedophile having been jailed for five-and-half years by a court in Dublin for sex offences on a 15-year-old boy.

Englishman Milne had returned to Bedfordshire following his release from jail.

But as a sex offender he was subject to periodic visits by police officers to make sure he posed no risk in the community.

Luton Crown Court heard today (Friday) it was as a result of one such visit to his home in December 2009 that police took away a lap top and computer tower for examination and discovered the images.

Milne, 48, of Gravenhurst Road, Campton, appeared for sentence having been convicted earlier of 17 offences of making indecent photos of a child.

Judge John Bevan QC fined him a total of �1,700 and ordered him to pay a further �200 in court costs.

In addition, under the terms of a three-year supervision order he will have to attend a sex offenders’ programme. His name will also go on the Sex Offenders Register for five years.

It was in February of 2005 that Milne was jailed for five-and-half years at Trim Circuit Court in Dublin for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy and a second offence of gross indecency with a child involving the same youngster.

Those offences dated back to 2002 and 2003 when he was a minister with the Church of Ireland.

Natalie Carter, prosecuting today, said officers from Bedfordshire Police’s sex offences management team would go to his address on occasions and without an appointment to carry out a risk assessment on him.

As a result of the December 2009 visit he was told his computers would be examined and when he said he was not consenting to it a warrant was obtained and the equipment seized in January of last year.

Mrs Carter said more than 4,000 images were recovered of naked teenage boys.

Nick Hoffman, defending, said Milne had a distinguished academic career and had gone to Oxford and Cambridge.

He said the vast majority of the pictures found by police were of nude boys without any sexual connotations being present.