A Dingwall man who had thousands of indecent images of children on his computer narrowly avoided jail and was ordered to carry out the maximum 300 hours of unpaid work in the community.
Sheriff Gordon Fleetwood warned Liam Mackay, 27, of Deas Avenue, he would “self select jail” if he failed to comply with the order.
Mackay was also put on the Sex offender’s Register for three years and will have to participate in a sex offenders programme.
The Sheriff was told by defence lawyer Pauline Chapman that Mackay had become “addicted” to child pornography after accidentally accessing it through an ambiguous link from a site containing legal material.
Sheriff Fleetwood commented: “It is difficult to become an addict. You have to keep doing something to become addicted to it.”
Fiscal Roderick Urquhart had earlier told the court that police received intelligence that a device using an I.P. address registered to Mackay’s home address had been used to download indecent images of children.
Police obtained a warrant to search the house October 17, 2014 a Philips laptop and a number of other electronic devices were seized.
Mr Urquhart went on: “Specialists examined the articles and found 8,816 indecent images and 54 indecent videos of children on the laptop.”
The court was told the vast majority of them were at the lowest end of the obscenity scale.
Police Scotland’s Detective Inspector Scott Macdonald said: “The viewing and distribution of indecent images is not a victimless crime – every day children are subjected to traumatic abuse for these types of images to be produced and then distributed across the world.
“Police Scotland and partners will continue to take action on those who play a part in this abhorrent crime cycle. We would encourage anyone has experienced abuse to come forward, regardless of how much time may have passed.”