Patrick Rock leaves Southwark Crown Court in London
A former aide to Prime Minister David Cameron has walked free from court after being convicted of downloading pictures of scantily-clad girls as young as 10 in sexual poses.
Patrick Rock, who turned 65 on Wednesday, faced 20 charges of making an indecent photograph of a child.
Rock, of Fulham, south-west London, had claimed the 20 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 took more than eight hours to convict him by majority verdict of five counts.
He 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 he downloaded the image – meaning she would have been younger when it was taken.
Judge Alistair McCreath sentenced Rock, wearing a black suit, off-white shirt and red spotted tie, to a two-year conditional discharge on each count, to run concurrently.
