A Moray teenager has been placed on the sex offenders register after being caught with indecent images of children.
The 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted to downloading the images of girls, aged between one and five, when he appeared at Elgin Sheriff Court yesterday.
Fiscal, Alex Swain, said that police officers, acting on intelligence, attended the teenager’s property on July 5 last year.
At 9.20am, they carried out a search and discovered a laptop within the bedroom of the accused.
Miss Swain said: “There were eight indecent images on it, featuring girls aged between one and five years old.
“They had been deleted at some point by the accused, but were found by experts in an inaccessible area of the computer.”
The court heard that one of the images was graded as Category A – the most serious, while five were Category B and two were Category C.
The teenager, who lives in the south of Elgin, admitted to “taking or permitting to be taken” indecent photographs of children between January 26 and March 21 last year.
His solicitor, Brent Lockie, said: “This young man has accessed the images concerned knowingly, but only on one occasion and he subsequently deleted them.”
Sheriff Chris Dickson deferred sentencing until Tuesday, June 13, for the preparation of psychological reports.
Sheriff Dickson also placed him on the sex offenders register.