A child rapist from Aberdeen who secretly filmed his abuse of children and a woman was jailed for 10 years today (Wednesday October 28).
Keith Ferguson was caught with images of sex acts he had committed along with a collection of child pornography he had amassed, including images and videos of the most serious type.
Police detained Ferguson (44) after intelligence was received from the National Online Child Abuse Prevention Agency.
Before he left his home in Aberdeen he said: “I’ve done bad things. It’s going to get bad for a while.”
A judge told Ferguson at the High Court in Edinburgh: “It is clear you present a serious risk of sexual harm to children.”
Lord Malcolm said: “Given the nature and gravity of your offending I am of the view that only a substantial period of imprisonment would be appropriate and in your case on your release special protective measures will be necessary.”
The judge ordered that Ferguson be under supervision for a further 10-year period and told him that if he breached the terms of his licence or offended again during that time he could be returned to jail for the present offences.
Lord Malcolm said: “You will now be provided with various programmes which are designed to address the risk which you pose to children. Can I stress to you it is extremely important you take full advantage of them.”
The judge told him: “You will be on the sex offenders’ register for life.”
The turbine component repair technician earlier admitted sexually assaulting and raping a girl aged between three and five, sexually assaulting another three-year-old and sexually assaulting a sleeping woman in his home city.
He also pled guilty to engaging in sexual activity in the presence of children and making and possessing indecent photos of children between June 2010 and June this year.
The court earlier heard that when police raided his home in Aberdeen on June 3 this year armed with a search warrant a large number of electronic items were seized for examination.
Advocate depute Stephen McCloy said a number of the indecent images recovered had been made by Ferguson and featured his victims. Others appeared to have been downloaded from the internet.
He said a total of 1552 indecent photos were found including 78 showing the worst examples of abuse.
A further 233 videos were found, including 103 at the most serious level.
The total running time of the videos exceeded six hours.
Footage which appeared to have been taken with a hidden camera showed a child with no trousers or pants on and had been name tagged by Ferguson.
Video was also recovered of a sleeping woman was also recovered which featured images of Ferguson molesting her.
The prosecutor said: “She was unaware that the accused had made these videos and touched her sexually in her sleep. She was hysterical when the police told her about the recovered videos.”
During an examination of a laptop, picture files, which appeared to have been again taken by a hidden camera of an 11-year-old girl, contained images of her naked as she changed.
She was also seen sleeping while Ferguson carried out a sex act on himself.
Further footage was found of Ferguson molesting his young rape victim during which he photographed her and carried out sex acts.
Ferguson, described as a prisoner in Grampian jail, claimed during an interview that he had been searching for “normal films” when images of child abuse came up .
He said he had used code words to find images of child abuse.
He used a mobile phone to record his abuse of one vulnerable girl and later revealed he had also used a spycam phone app.
The prosecutor said: “He indicated that he wanted to be punished for things that he had done, but wouldn’t own up to things that he didn’t remember doing.”
Defence counsel Ronnie Renucci said: “He accepts there is no excuse and no justification whatsoever for his behaviour.”
Mr Renucci said Ferguson was “quite rightly” very ashamed and recognised he had a problem which needed to be addressed.
