A man who was forwarding child abuse material to an undercover officer has avoided prison after police raided his home and found him with sadistic sexual material.
Christopher Bloom appeared in the dock at Aberdeen Sheriff Court where he admitted downloading and storing indecent images of children on his home devices.
When police searched his computer they found indecent images of children – including file links with the titles ‘young girls’ and ‘teen girl pics’.
Upon a further search of Bloom’s phone, police found images of children involved in sadistic sexual activity.
The 46-year-old also shared disturbing sexual videos involving adults and children with an online user called ‘Karen’ who turned out to be an undercover officer.
Indecent images found
Fiscal depute Rebecca Thompson said in January of last year, police received intelligence that an email address associated with Bloom had shared child sexual abuse material online.
A warrant was issued, and a raid was carried out at Bloom’s home in the Rubislaw area of the city.
The search unearthed a number of electronic devices, including a computer and a mobile phone, which were analysed.
The computer was found to contain three indecent images of children, each of Category A, B and C levels.
They contained images of children aged between 10 and 15 years of age.
File links were also found with titles such as ‘ten girl pics’ and ‘young girls September 2017’.
The mobile phone was found to contain 12 indecent images, which included five Category A, five Category B images and two Category C.
These images featured children between the age of nine and 15 engaged in sadistic sexual activity and sex with adults.
‘Karen’ was actually undercover cop
On January 25 last year, Bloom had engaged in an online conversation with a female using the name ‘Karen’ who was in fact a law enforcement officer.
Later that same day, ‘Karen’ received two videos from Bloom.
One of these was of the most serious category and another the second most serious and involved adults engaged in sexual activity with adults.
In the dock, Bloom pleaded guilty to one charge that on various occasions between February 21, 2017 and September 17, 2022, he downloaded indecent images of children.
He also admitted a further charge of distributing child abuse material.
‘Behaviour is abominable’
Defence solicitor Ian Woodward-Nutt told the court that at the time of these offences his client had been struggling with his mental health and the breakdown of his marriage.
“Mr Bloom does not seek to excuse what he’s done,” the solicitor said.
“He came into contact online with what he believed was an adult female and their discourse culminated in conversation about sexual fantasies – he then sent this sexual content to her.
“Mr Bloom did that not thinking she was a police officer.
“He knows his behaviour is abominable and he is deeply ashamed by his actions.”
Mr Woodward-Nutt added that, of his own volition, his client had taken part in some programme work to better understand the impact of his offences.
Sentencing Bloom, Sheriff Morag McLaughlin said that this work is “unusual” for the court to see and “is to his credit”.
“I’m satisfied that the risk you pose can be mitigated with a community-based order,” she added.
As an alternative to a prison sentence, Sheriff McLaughlin made Bloom subject to a community payback order with supervision for two years and ordered him to take part in a sex offenders programme.
Bloom must also carry out 200 hours of unpaid work while also staying within his home with an eight-month restriction of liberty order.
She also placed Bloom, of Beaconsfield Place, Aberdeen, on the sex offenders register for five years.
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