An Aberdeen mum who admitted sharing child pornography with paedophiles in the US in exchange for mobile phone top-ups has narrowly avoided jail.
Pauline Judge posed as a teenage girl on online chat rooms to entice the sex-offenders in America to talk to her.
She would then send them dozens of indecent images of children she had found on the internet with the condition that they paid for her mobile credit.
This morning, Judge was ordered to carry out 240 hours of unpaid work as a direct alternative to custody when she appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court to be sentenced.
Judge, 33, had previously pled guilty to sharing and making indecent images of children from her home at 59 Willowpark Crescent, Aberdeen.
But sentence was deferred for months in order for background reports to be carried out after the court heard her life “spiraled out of control” after her father died when she was just 13.
Representing Judge, solicitor Tony Burgess said his client had felt “a great sense of relief” when she was caught by police officers.
They had received intelligence that she had been talking about the obscene images of children online with another user in America.
After a search warrant was executed at her house, police found a number of devices, including an iPod, which contained a total of 416 pictures and six videos.
The court heard the images which contained children being raped and abused featured babies as young as six months old up to teenagers aged 15.
Mr Burgess said she was a very “sad lonely, desperate and depressed” woman whose life had been on a downward spiral.
He said she felt being caught was an opportunity to get out of the cycle she had found herself in.
The court previously heard police officers had explained the nature of the intelligence they had received when they visited Judge’s home.
Fiscal depute Felicity Merson said: “She was cautioned and intimated that she had sent indecent images in return for top-up credits on her mobile phone.”
Forensic examinations also found that a number of photographs had been exchanged with other internet users.
It was not possible for officers to ascertain what images were sent but the text related to prepubescent girls.
Evidence also revealed that the computer user had visited chat rooms where people had an interest in chatting about sex with youngsters and babies.
Sentencing, Sheriff William Summers said he accepted that she had a troubled background and said that the number of images was at the “lower end of the scale”.
He said he felt the public could be protected by imposing a community based disposal as a direct alternative to custody.
Judge, who pled guilty to two charges of making and distributing indecent photographs of children between January 10, 2012 and June 27 last year, was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for three years and ordered to take part in a joint sex offenders’ programme.