A man has been placed on the sex offenders register after misunderstanding legislation around indecent images of children.
Martin Duncan had hundreds of indecent images and more than an hour of video footage of youngsters.
The 53-year-old was caught when police raided his home in Hutcheon Court in Aberdeen.
And despite pleading guilty to the offences, Duncan claimed he did not realise 16 and 17-year-olds were classed as children in the legislation.
Fiscal depute Rebecca Thompson told Aberdeen Sheriff Court that on Thursday December 17 2020, police received intelligence relating to an IP address linked to Duncan.
The intelligence showed the IP address was connected to the internet and was both downloading and offering for sharing images and videos of child sexual abuse material.
A search warrant was executed at Duncan’s address at 6.20am on December 23 2020.
Duncan allowed officers entry and they searched the address and seized various items.
‘Not specifically looking for images of what he considered to be children’
Ms Thompson told the court: “Upon examining the devices, files relating to child sexual abuse material were found contained within an external hard drive.”
Within the hard drive, 709 accessible indecent images were found.
While the vast majority were deemed category C, 29 of them were classed category A – the most serious kind.
A total of 74 accessible videos were also found, of which 37 were category A.
The total run time of the videos was one hour and 40 minutes.
A further 254 images and 21 videos were found but were “inaccessible”.
Duncan was arrested and, in interview, admitted downloading numerous pornographic files from a file-sharing website, where he was “searching for images of teenage girls”.
When asked what he meant by “teenage girls”, Duncan replied “16 and up”.
Ms Thompson told the court: “He also stated there may have been further indecent images of children contained on some files, however, he deleted the ones he thought were of children under the age of 16 after sifting through the various downloads.”
‘He thought children of 16 and over were adults’
Duncan, of Hutcheon Court, Aberdeen, pled guilty to taking, permitting to be taken or making, as well as possession of, indecent images or pseudo-images of children.
Defence agent Andrew Ormiston said his client had shown “shame, embarrassment and insight into his offending”.
He went on: “He thought children of 16 and over were adults.
“He was effectively downloading entertainment in bulk and was covering a vast number of images, lots of adults and children.
“He was not specifically looking for images of what he considered to be children.
“It’s an error in understanding of what a child is in terms of that legislation.”
Sheriff Ian Wallace ordered Duncan to be supervised for two years and to complete 252 hours of unpaid work as a direct alternative to custody.
He also placed him on the sex offenders register.
For all the latest court cases in Aberdeen as well as crime and breaking incidents, join our Facebook group.
