A 22-year-old paedophile has been warned he could face a prison sentence after being caught with indecent images of children for a second time.
Daniel McGladrigan already had a previous conviction for the same crime from 2021 but has now appeared in the dock at Aberdeen Sheriff Court to admit another offence.
As a result of the first offence, the 22-year-old is monitored by the sexual offender policing unit.
And when they carried out an unannounced home visit in January last year, officers analysed a tablet device and discovered indecent images of young girls aged between 12 and 15.
‘Large number of visits to website hosting indecent images of children’
Fiscal depute Carol Gammie told Aberdeen Sheriff Court two detectives visited McGladrigan at 10.15am on January 22 2022 and were given consent to examine several devices.
Ms Gammie said: “An electronic tablet device belonging to the accused was manually examined by the officers and was found to contain what was suspected to be indecent images of children within the ‘recycle bin’ of his Google Images application.”
The tablet was seized and forensically examined and found to contain 47 category C images and one category A image, the most serious.
The images were no longer accessible to be viewed by McGladrigan and could
not be accurately dated.
‘The court will be considering a custodial sentence’ for McGladrigan
However, they were created at some point between the purchase of the tablet on January 10 2020 and its seizure on January 22 2022.
Further analysis found that in a two-week period between May and June 2021, the device was used to make a “large number of visits to a website known to host indecent images of children”.
Numerous web pages with names indicative of child sexual abuse and exploitation had also been accessed.
McGladrigan, of Greeness, Cuminestown, pled guilty to taking, permitting to be taken or making indecent images or pseudo-images of children.
Defence agent Peter Keene said: “I think we’re going to need reports here.”
Sheriff Ian Wallace deferred sentence for background reports, but warned McGladrigan: “Given your previous conviction, you’ll understand the court will be considering a custodial sentence in this case.”
He also made McGladrigan subject to the notification requirements of the sexual offences act.
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