Police raided the home of a landscape photographer and discovered thousands of indecent images of children on his computer.
Included in his illegal collection was a photograph of a naked young boy on a local beach, taken from a distance without the family’s knowledge.
Stephen Marrable, 51, appeared for sentence at Inverness Sheriff Court yesterday after a deferral for a background report. He was jailed for two years, backdated to May 2 by Sheriff David Sutherland, and placed on the sex offender’s register.
He had earlier admitted taking and making indecent images, possessing those images and possessing adult bestiality pornography between March 2008 and May, 2016.
Fiscal depute Roderick Urquhart told Sheriff David Sutherland that Marrable of Stafford Road, Dornoch, appeared to run a business called Tittle Tattle Photography which the website claimed “undertake[s] all forms of photographic services for a variation of clients”.
He was described as primarily a landscape photographer.
Mr Urquhart said that in May last year, intelligence was received by police that a device at or near his house had accessed or downloaded indecent images of children.
The house was raided on May 27 and he told officers: “You’ll find stuff on mine”.
After analysis by experts, a computer tower was found to have 37 indecent images of young boys and girls from the approximate age of 4 to 15 years with six in the highest obscene category.
From a second Computer Tower 749 indecent thumbnail images of young boys and girls from the approximate age of 4 to 15 years were recovered with one in the highest category.
On a Laptop 2678 indecent still images – 124 in the highest obscene category A – and six indecent video files, two of which were category A were recovered.
A total of 80 computer discs, including DVDs recovered also had a total of 4,225 indecent images of children and mainly the adult pornography. A hard drive had another seven images of children.
Two of the DVDs contained files with indecent images of children.
Defence solicitor Duncan Henderson said Marrable was a first offender but expected a jail sentence.