A man charged with seven child pornography offences yesterday denied he accessed the images on a laptop seized from his home.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the Supreme Court that he could say “with a clear conscience and certainty” that he had not viewed more than 1,200 child pornography videos and photographs.

He said: “I have never accessed, viewed or downloaded any of this horrid material, nor do I take an interest or desire to do so.”

The pornography is alleged to have been on a laptop found under the 30-year-old man’s bed during a search of his Devonshire home in March 2015.

The man is accused of viewing child pornography between April 12, 2010 and March 11, 2015.

The defendant said that the computer had first come to the house in about 2008 or 2009.

He described it as a “household laptop”, adding that it had been loaned to a friend for six to nine months in 2010, and that he got it back in late 2010 or early 2011.

He told the court that the computer began to have problems with the screen and that he had placed it in a wicker basket in the kitchen around late 2013 or early 2014 where it sat “for months”.

The man said that later that year, around November or December, he was asked by his mother to move the computer out of the kitchen.

The defendant told the court that he took the computer into his bedroom and tried to start it, but that it would not boot up, so he put it under his bed.

The man told the court that his bedroom at the time of his arrest did not have a wi-fi signal and that he had not used a wired connection to the internet either.

The Crown has alleged that the defendant used peer-to-peer filesharing networks to access the pornography.

The man denied downloading a number of peer-to-peer software programmes found on the laptop and said that at the time of his arrest he did not know what they were.

Larry Mussenden, for the Crown, said: “I’m going to put to you that back then, before you were arrested, you knew, actually did know what a peer-to-peer network was.”

The defendant denied the claim.

Mr Mussenden added that the defendant had been the only one using the peer-to-peer programmes to perform searches.

He said: “You are trying your best to distance yourself from that computer, aren’t you?”

The defendant replied: “Those are your words, not mine.”

Mr Mussenden questioned why the defendant told police in an interview that he did not have a computer. He asked: “When you didn’t mention it, you were trying to conceal from the police that you had a laptop computer, weren’t you?”

The man responded: “Those are your words, not mine.”

The defendant earlier told the court that when questioned by his lawyer, Jerome Lynch QC, he did not consider the laptop a computer.

He explained that when he thought of a computer he thought of a desktop machine “not so much a laptop”.

The defendant denied Mr Mussenden’s assertion that he had made the child pornography available to others over the peer-to-peer filesharing networks.

Mr Mussenden said: “You get some excitement out of these child abuse materials, don’t you?”

The defendant responded: “No, I do not.”

The trial continues.