An Aberdeen sex offender found with more than two days’ worth of child abuse video has been warned he has narrowly avoided going to jail.
Michal Lauryn appeared in the dock at Aberdeen Sheriff Court where he admitted possessing more than 10,000 indecent images of children and hours of video – some of which featured “sadistic” content.
The 26-year-old was snared when police raided his home and seized his devices, where they found a large amount of indecent material.
It was stated that some of the children found within the pictures and video were as young as three years old.
Lauryn’s solicitor told the court that his client insists he has “no attraction to children” but is “addicted to pornography”.
Accused’s partner says he was ‘protective’ over devices
Fiscal depute Jane Spark told the court that in February last year, police received intelligence that a device connected to the internet had accessed images and videos of child abuse material from Lauryn’s home address.
On March 14, police went to Lauryn’s home with a search warrant where they seized four devices on which indecent images and videos were discovered.
Lauryn was arrested and interviewed under caution where he denied having any interest in children but “felt he had an addiction to pornography”.
His partner was also interviewed by the police and described Lauryn as “protective” of his devices and “that he didn’t like to share the usage of them”.
The devices taken during the police search were subjected to a full cybercrime examination where they found 784 Category A, 1,095 Category B and 8,373 Category C images of children.
Over 120 indecent videos of children were also found on these devices, most of which were of the most serious category.
The total runtime of the video footage was more than 58 hours.
The files recovered featured boys and girls estimated to be aged between three and 16 years of age.
The abusive material also included animals, sadistic sexual activity and footage featuring children and adults.
In the dock, Lauryn pleaded guilty to one charge of downloading indecent images of children.
He also admitted a second charge of being in possession of child abuse material.
‘Large quantity’ of images
Defence solicitor Paul Barnett told the court that his client was 22 years old when his offences began and has no previous convictions of any kind.
He went on to describe Lauryn’s childhood as “difficult” and one where he had a large amount of “unsupervised access to the internet at a young age”.
“Mr Lauryn accepts that there has been some psychological damage and it is accepted by the police that he has an addiction to pornography – but he denies any sexual attraction to children,” he said.
“However, Mr Lauryn accepts responsibility and that the images seem to be on his devices.
“He knows that the court will take a very serious view given the number of images.”
Sheriff Andrew Miller told Lauryn he had been found in possession of a “large quantity of images of child abuse”.
He added: “Anyone who searches for or obtains images of that nature commits a very serious offence and fuels the worldwide demand for these images and for that reason this is viewed very seriously by the court.
“The number of images recovered from your devices is very high and causes the court to very seriously consider a period of imprisonment.”
However, as an alternative to a prison sentence, Sheriff Miller made Lauryn, of Froghall Road, Aberdeen, subject to a community payback order with supervision for three years and ordered him to carry out 250 hours unpaid work.
He made Lauryn subject to the sex offenders register for three years and ordered that he take part in a sex offender’s programme.
“This sentence is to illustrate just how close you have come to being imprisoned today,” the sheriff told him.
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