A former police sergeant walked free from court yesterday after being cleared of child porn charges – and said his nightmare was finally over.
Neil Shand, who had been accused of storing obscene images of children on a computer at his home in Aberdeenshire, spoke last night of his relief at the end of a case that has been hanging over him for almost four years.
“Without the support of my wife, I don’t think I would have made it,” he said as he left court.
Colleagues charged the 51-year-old in 2010 after a search team raided his property and seized electronic equipment that was later found to contain dozens of illicit files.
Mr Shand, who was a serving Grampian Police officer based in Inverurie at the time, has always denied the allegations.
Yesterday, the case against him collapsed under court scrutiny. Mr Shand was found not guilty of all charges at the end of a five-day trial at Banff Sheriff Court that stretched back to November.
Defence counsel Kevin McCallum successfully argued that the Crown had failed to prove its case after hearing evidence from Mr Shand’s wife, sons and former colleagues.
Last night, Mr Shand, of North Street, Aberchirder, told the Press and Journal he was pleased to be able to draw a line under the case.
He described the court proceedings as “traumatic” and said the case had come as he was battling serious health problems.
“I’m just glad that justice has been served and I’d like to thank everyone who helped and supported us,” Mr Shand said.
A questionmark remained last night over how 41 illicit picture files came to be buried on the hard drive of the Shand family’s home computer.
A further 32 images were recovered by police on a memory stick found in Mr Shand’s sock drawer. Some of the pictures dated back to December 2008.
In court, Mr Shand had incriminated his grown-up sons, Connor, Luke and Glenn, and some of their friends, who regularly stayed over and would have had unsupervised access to the communal computer.
The three sons all gave evidence during the trial and denied looking at child pornography on the family PC or any other computer.
Mr Shand, who was suspended from the force when the allegations came to light, insisted last night that he did not blame anyone and said he had no intention of taking legal action against the police.
“Who can say how these things happen?” he said. “Things get downloaded on to computers all the time when you play certain games or click on some websites.
“But I’m not going to bear any grudges. I just want to put this behind me, get a job and move on with my life.”
Mr Shand, who retired in September, added: “The police have been great to me throughout all of this. I have absolutely no complaints about them whatsoever. I certainly don’t have any plans to sue the police over this.”
Asked how the last three-and-a-half years had been for her, Mr Shand’s wife, 51-year-old care worker Susan, said: “It has just been a nightmare.”
At court, Mr McCallum lodged a no-case-to-answer submission after the Crown closed its case.
He argued that prosecutors had pressed ahead with their case with no evidence that directly linked the images to his client.
He said the closest the Crown had come to an admission was when Mr Shand told police about the pen drive in his sock drawer, saying it contained adult pornography.
Fiscal depute Karen Dow argued that Mr Shand did not appear shocked when he was shown the images during a police interview.
She also said the computer had only two user names: Owner and Neil.
Sheriff Edward Savage told Mr Shand he was satisfied there was no case to answer and found him not guilty.