A man has been warned he faces jail after downloading more than 10,000 child pornography images and almost 64 hours worth of footage of children being abused.
Christopher Grant took the illicit material from an online site while at his home in Aberdeen between September 11 and October 29, 2013.
Dozens of the pictures were rated “level 5” by prosecutors – the most serious on the scale of child porn images.
The subjects were mostly girls, ranging in age from as young as six months to 15 years.
When officers raided his house, Grant said the illegal material was his and that he was the only person responsible for the crime.
Yesterday the 31-year-old appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court and admitted a charge of making the indecent images or pseudo-images of children at 39 Braeside Terrace in the city.
He had been facing two further charges of having indecent images in his possession and distributing the images between December 29, 2011, and October 30, 2013. His not guilty pleas were accepted by the Crown.
Fiscal depute Gavin Letford said a search warrant was granted for Grant’s address on October 30, 2013.
During the raid officers recovered a Dell laptop computer and a hard drive.
Grant was then taken to Queen Street police station to be interviewed where he told officers he had been downloading the illegal images via a peer-to-peer website.
Analysis of the computer equipment found 10,566 child porn images on his laptop and videos totalling 64 hours and 47 minutes.
Mr Letford said “the majority” of the images were at level one – the lowest end of the scale – however 75 were classed as level five, 295 were at level four and 2,138 were classed as level three.
Most of the videos were between levels one and four with seven films at level five.
The court heard the illicit images found on the hard drive depicted girls aged between four and nine.
Sheriff William Summers deferred sentence on Grant for background reports to be carried out into his character, but told his solicitor, Gail Goodfellow: “I find it hard to see how he can avoid a custodial sentence.”
Grant was placed on the sex offenders’ register and will be sentenced next month.