A MOTHER who shared child pornography with paedophiles - in exchange for mobile phone top-ups - has been ordered to carry out community work.

Pauline Judge, 33, posed as teenage girls on the internet to talk to sex offenders in America. She sent them dozens of pictures of children she found online if they topped up the credit on her mobile phone.

Police recovered 416 illegal images and six videos on computer equipment seized during a raid of her Aberdeen home.

She was sentenced at Aberdeen Sheriff Court yesterday and ordered to carry out 240 hours of unpaid work in the community. She was placed on a three year supervision order and was also put on the sex offenders' register.

Her lawyer said she had a traumatic childhood and suffered depression.

Sheriff William Summers told the court there was a victim for every image of child pornography.