A north-east man has admitted possessing hours of horrific video footage showing children as young as six being abused.
Kevin Robertson, of Main Street in New Byth, near Turriff, also had hundreds of indecent images of children under the age of 16.
They were discovered following a raid on his mother’s home, with the material spread over a variety of devices, including computers, hard drives and laptops.
Two years on, the 43-year-old appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court yesterday to plead guilty to two charges relating to possession and distribution of indecent images.
Depute fiscal Sally McAuley provided an extensive list to the court of the number of images and videos Robertson had in his possession.
She said police had been called to the house in September 2017 after it emerged images from an IP address registered there were being uploaded to the internet.
A Toshiba laptop belonging to Robertson was found to contain 200 videos of under 16s being abused, the youngest just six-years-old.
On the Toshiba laptop were four category A images – deemed the most severe – seven category B images – the mid-range in terms of seriousness – and three category C images, deemed the least severe.
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On another device, Robertson had 197 category A videos, totalling four days, four hours, 15 minutes and 58 seconds of illegal content.
In addition, a Dell PC tower was also examined by specialist cybercrime officers and found to contain a folder labelled “pre-teens”.
Various other hard drives, discs and devices contained additional illegal videos and photos. One disc bore seven hours of content.
Police arrested Robertson, who previously worked as a forklift driver, on July 13 last year.
He pleaded guilty to charges of possessing indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of children and of sharing the indecent photographs between November 28, 2014 and July 29, 2018.
Sheriff Morag McLaughin deferred sentence until April 26 in order to obtain further reports from social workers.
She said Robertson’s existing bail conditions, which ban him from using the internet or having access to children, would be continued.
He has been placed on the sex offenders register.