A "tech-savvy" teenager who claimed he was sent masses of unsolicited child and animal pornography later "got curious" and thought he may have been "too quick to judge" by deleting it, a court heard.

Dilruk Dias-Banbaranayake, 18, was found guilty on Wednesday of storing hundreds of vile images and videos on his online Dropbox account - after it was revealed he had a previous conviction for distributing child pornography.

The Selsdon teenager claimed the Dropbox images - including one that showed sexual activity between a dog and young girl - had been sent to him by "complete strangers" via the mobile chat app Kik before automatically backing up to his online storage account.

The Kingston College student told magistrates at Croydon Youth Court he had "no use" for the 482 images and videos - including of child rape - and "did not feel any pleasure" out of viewing them.

But during cross-examination, prosecutor Remi Ogunfowora revealed Dias-Banbaranayake had been convicted last May for sending indecent images to internet users abroad - three months before his arrest for the sick material on Dropbox.

RELATED: 'Tech-savvy' South Croydon teenager Dilruk Dias-Banbaranayake facing jail for possessing hundreds of child and animal porn images on Dropbox

The teenager, who was just 15 when he first accessed the material in February 2014, claimed he deleted the horrifying images from his phone when he realised what had been sent to him.

But he later regretted being "quick to judge".

During cross-examination, he said: "I got curious. Maybe this is something I could try and get into once more. This is something I could try and explore.

"I thought, this is around my age, this is something I could try and get satisfaction from. So I tried to send those three images."

Dias-Banbaranayake said the later images had involved "naked girls" similar to his own age.

Ms Ogunfowora also told magistrates Dias-Banbaranayake had admitted requesting hundreds of images over Kik between February and July 2014 - before changing his story under cross-examination.

Officers arrested the teenager in August 2015 after Dropbox tipped off the National Crime Agency about the images.

Giving evidence to the court, Detective Constable Sue-Day Sawyer said: "He said that there was trouble at home between his parents and one of the reasons, how he was dealing with that was accessing apps and having these images sent to him."

When asked by Ms Ogunfowora what Dias-Banbaranayake said he did with the images, DC Sawyer said: "He said, 'I viewed them.''"

Watched by his parents in the public gallery, Dias-Banbaranayake, of Addington Road, claimed the interview had been "sudden" and "didn't give him a chance to explain".

He told the court he had deleted all the illegal material from his phone and blocked the senders as soon he realised what had been sent to him, but was not aware the images were still stored on Dropbox.

One showed an adult woman having sex with a dog, while others apparently featured naked teenage boys taking selfies in front of the mirror.

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Dias-Banbaranayake claimed his Android phone was automatically backing them up to his Dropbox account along with holiday snaps from Venice and Rome.

Graham Gilbert, defending, said the teenager "signed up to this site Kik but didn't really understand what he was likely to be getting himself into".

He added:"He was sent these pictures unsolicited...If he wanted to keep them and if he was going to use them for any kind of gratification at all, he might have kept them somewhere more convenient than an open storage [website]."

But chief magistrate Terry Geater said it was "inconceivable" the "tech-savvy" teenager had not been aware of the images or that he had been sent so many unsolicited.

Dias-Banbaranayake was found guilty of 12 counts of possessing extreme or indecent material and placed on the Sex Offenders Register.

He was released on conditional bail until a pre-sentence hearing at the youth court on June 2, at which magistrates will decide whether the teenager should be sentenced by a judge at crown court.

Dias-Banbaranayake declined to comment as he left the court room with his parents on Wednesday.

Following his conviction, one of Dias-Banbaranayake's former classmates, who asked not to be named, said: "He seemed OK, but so do most people before such things happen.

"I just hope that if what happened is a 'sickness', he can be 'cured', sorted out so that he can be seen as a person again."

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