An Aberdeen grandfather has been placed on the sex offenders register after specialist cyber police officers discovered he had indecent images of children.
Stanley Smith, 55, appeared in Aberdeen Sheriff Court yesterday over two charges relating to images of under-agers police found on a memory card.
Smith admitted making, taking or permitting indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs to be taken at a property on Sandilands Drive and elsewhere in Aberdeen in October 2008, and being in possession of them until March 8 last year.
Fiscal depute Lynzi Souter told the court: “As a result of intelligence received a warrant was executed.
“A number of items of computer equipment were seized and were sent for examination.”
Officers discovered nine images of category C – the lowest on the scale – on an SD card, which it was established had been saved to it in 2008, after they were downloaded from an online sharing platform.
After the discovery, Smith, who currently resides at Rosehill Drive, was arrested.
Smith’s defence solicitor Mike Monro told the court that the 55-year-old had a “huge amount of computer equipment and other pieces of electronic equipment” in his house, as well as “boxes of SD cards he had bought by the batch over the years.”
Mr Monro said there was “no evidence that he went back and visited the images”, and explained he was a grandfather.
He also argued that Smith was “no risk to society”, and said if there had been further offending since 2008, the cyber crime unit would have discovered it during the search.
Sheriff Margaret Hodge deferred sentence to next month, and Smith was placed on the sex offenders register in the interim.
