A former Moray College technician has admitted possessing indecent pictures of boys and girls as young as three-years-old.
Gary MacKenzie, 52, was caught with nearly four hours of child pornography videos at his home last year.
After being interviewed by police in July last year, the Dufftown resident initially denied having any offensive material, but later explained he may have inadvertently downloaded videos while searching for pictures of adults wearing nappies.
Police raided the 52-year-old’s home on July 22 after they received intelligence the internet network at the property was involved in sharing images of children.
At the time, locals reported seeing officers search the property for several hours while boxes of belongings, including computers, were removed.
Yesterday, at Elgin Sheriff Court, fiscal Alison Wylie said the images were found on a tower computer, hard drive and several disks.
She added: “A number of files were recovered, which indicated that videos of children had been accessed.”
Mrs Wylie told the court she did not want to go into too much detail about the words MacKenzie was searching for on his computer.
He was found to be in possession of 16 category A, five category B and 16 category C images. The videos ran to a total of three hours and 57 minutes. Children between the ages of three and 15 were shown in the footage.
Sheriff Olga Pasportnikov deferred sentence on MacKenzie, of 9 Fife Street, until July 14 for reports to be prepared. He also admitted possessing indecent photographs of children between November 5 2007 and July 21 last year.
MacKenzie also pleaded guilty to possessing extreme pornographic material between March 28 2011 and July 22 last year.
Defence solicitor Robert Cruickshank declined to comment until his client was sentenced.
Moray College was invited to comment yesterday, but did not respond.