A man who downloaded more than 2,300 indecent images and videos of children has avoided a prison sentence.
Nigel Davies was caught with thousands of images and videos of children, aged between six months and 15, engaging in sexual activity.
The 42-year-old’s sick collection had a total combined video time of two days and 20 hours, Aberdeen Sheriff Court was told.
His mobile phone held more than a total of 1,279 images and 1,083 videos of children.
‘Sadistic’ content
Of those, 234 images and 544 videos were deemed Category A, the most serious.
Davies made a spontaneous admission to police that they were on his phone when they turned up at his Drumlithie home.
Fiscal depute Brian Young said the material included boys and girls engaged in ‘sadistic’ sexual activity.
The material was held on his mobile phone both within its cloud storage and within a social networking app.
Has no intention of reoffending
Davies admitted taking possession of, and permitting to be taken or making indecent images or pseudo-images of children between October 1, 2018 and December 21, 2020.
Defence agent David Sutherland said Davies accepted “full responsibility” for his actions and had been found by social workers to be at a “low-risk” of reoffending.
“He lives with his partner and has no outstanding cases,” he said.
“My client accepts full responsibility for his crimes. He doesn’t seek to minimise the seriousness of his behaviour and has no intention of repeating it.”
He said risk assessments show he is at low risk of carrying out further sexual offences and at low risk of carrying out any violent crimes.
Mr Sutherland suggested that “given the remorse expressed” and the “lack of significant record” that Davies could be spared jail.
“He has explained in the report what he was looking at and what he felt looking at that,” he added.
‘Not victimless crimes’
Sheriff William Summers said it was “despicable” behaviour but was satisfied that Davies “recognised the gravity” of his offending.
“These are despicable offences and these are not victimless crimes,” told Davies.
“Every child who appears in an image you have viewed is a victim of abuse. Anyone that views these images perpetuates the vile treatment in the images.”
He added that although the offending lasted two years the number of images recovered was “quite small” and there had been no “sophisticated storage or indexing” of them.
Sheriff Summers handed Davies, of Glenbervie, Drumlithie, a community payback order comprising 18 months of supervision and 180 hours of unpaid work.
Davies was also added to the Sex Offender’s Register for a period of 18 months.
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