September 2006 Swim coach caught viewing child porn A shamed former swimming coach caught viewing and storing hundreds of child porn images has been banned from associating with young people for eight years.  Married father-of-two Michael Hunt, 47, visited internet sites containing naked images of children as young as five while he was also teaching youngsters how to swim, as a registered coach of 10 years standing in Northumberland.  He was caught in June last year when a computer which he used in his job as an administration manager with Ashington firm Cortech Fire and Security was sent for repair, and child porn images were found on it.  Suspicious that Hunt was responsible, the company’s managing director set up a secret video recorder on the new computer and found him looking at porn sites during the working day.  Police later seized two compact discs from Hunt, both protected by passwords, containing a total of 101 saved images. But the number he actually viewed online was said to be three times that, with offences found to date back to 2002.  Yesterday Hunt, of Ravens Hill Drive, Ashington, escaped a jail sentence at Bedlington Magistrates’ Court after admitting four charges of possessing indecent images of children.  He was given a two-year community order with a supervision requirement, sentenced to take part in the national sex offender work programme and told to pay pounds 80 costs. He was also made the subject of a Sexual Offences Protection Order for eight years, which means he must not be alone with or communicate with young people under 18 without reasonable cause or excuse.  The court was told that Hunt has voluntarily given up his work as a swimming coach and is now unemployed as a result of his offences.  Prosecutor Cuthbert Regan said, after his arrest, Hunt had first claimed he had accessed the child porn sites accidentally. Later, he claimed he had visited them out of curiosity but had not downloadedimages and found them disgusting.  Nick O’Mara, defending, said Hunt’s actions had caused irreparable damage to his life and reputation.  His 27-year marriage was still intact, as his wife and children were standing by him, but he had lost two jobs as a result of his offences coming to light and was now unemployed.  He said all of the images viewed by Hunt were in the lowest category of child pornography and could be summarised as pictures of naked boys and girls, aged five to 14, in erotic poses with no sexual activity taking place.  “He found himself drawn into looking at images which I don’t believe he would even have thought about in his wildest dreams if they had not been available so easily on the internet. He says it has never occurred to him to think about children in that way and that he has no paedophile tendencies,” he added.  Mr O’Mara said Hunt has voluntarily resigned as a swimming coach as he felt he could not continue, even though he felt no sexual impulses towards children in his care.