A man was jailed yesterday after a hidden stash of child pornography was uncovered at the home of a registered child minder.
Hundreds of obscene images were found by police on computers seized from Andrew Elrick’s family house in Mintlaw.
At the time, the property was used by his wife as a base for her child-minding business. The explicit pictures featured children as young as two years old.
Elrick, 53, denied having anything to do with the illicit files, but was found guilty following a three-day trial at Peterhead Sheriff Court earlier this year.
He was convicted of possessing indecent pictures of children between May 2005 and December 2012 and also taking, or permitting to be taken or made, illicit photographs.
Police found nearly 1,500 files, but lawyers argued that many of these had been automatically duplicated.
Yesterday, Elrick, of 18 Brae Crescent, Mintlaw, returned to court to be sentenced.
Sheriff Alison Stirling told him he been found guilty of serious charges and had been caught with a large number of pictures and videos.
Although most files were classed at the lower end of the court’s indecency scale, more than 100 fell within the most serious categories, featuring sex between adults and children and sadism.
Sheriff Stirling said: “I viewed a selection of these files at all levels of the scale. I watched a video which was classed at the highest level and it cannot be suggested that the child was a willing participant.”
She said the children in the clips and photos ranged from two to 15 years old.
“I accept that your interest is in older children, from what I saw,” she said. Sheriff Stirling added that a community sentence was “unrealistic”.
She said: “I am satisfied that a custodial sentence is appropriate and that anything less would be viewed as unduly lenient.”
Jailing Elrick for 12 months, she ordered him to stay on the sex offenders register for 10 years.
He may face further restrictions imposed by Scottish Ministers once he is released.
As he was led out of the dock in handcuffs, Elrick said “I love you” to his wife Irene, who was weeping in the public gallery.
The court heard that police swooped on the family home just after 8am on December 29, 2012.
Officers were investigating reports that Elrick’s IP address had been used to access child pornography through a file-sharing website.