A paedophile who downloaded more than 30 hours of child abuse videos that featured babies as young as three months old has avoided jail.
David Small was last month convicted of hoarding hundreds of disturbing videos featuring children that were hidden in a secret app on his mobile phone.
When the 25-year-old was snared by police, they found his Samsung Galaxy had stored more than 750 videos and upwards of 80 images.
It’s understood that some of the victims in Small’s vile 33-hour-long video collection included infants.
He was also caught with extreme pornography on the same device, showing a woman engaged in a sick sexual act with a dog.
Other adults told David Small where to find dodgy downloads
During his trial, Small, of Land Street in Keith, was found guilty by unanimous verdict on two charges of downloading and possessing indecent images and videos of children between July 1 2019 and January 21 2021.
He was also found guilty by a majority verdict of possessing extreme pornographic images.
In court, it was revealed that Small had chatted with other adults using the online messaging app called Kik.
On it, he learned where he could find the indecent material.
Small then downloaded the dodgy images and videos using a file-sharing site.
‘He did this for his own gratification’
Jurors were shown a police interview in which Small admitted to officers from the National Child Abuse Unit that he had indecent content on his phone.
“I know for a fact that there are pictures of children under 18,” he told them.
Asked by the officers what kind of content it was, Small said there was also “sexual abuse” material alongside images of “teens”, adding: “I think it’s a mixture”.
Small then went on to claim that he had only used the file-sharing site because he was looking for girls aged “17, 18 or 19”.
He added: “I did not intend to save anything younger than teenagers”.
In his final speech to the jury, fiscal depute Darren Harty told jurors that Small downloaded the illegal content and “thereafter moved them to a secure file that was locked – he even put a passcode on it”.
“He did this for his own gratification and only he had access,” Mr Harty said.
Small later admitted to police that he had used the file-sharing site for around six or seven months.
It took a jury of eight men and seven women less than half an hour to convict Small on the three charges for downloading the horrific material from an address in Rothiemay.
Following the verdict, Sheriff Andrew Miller told Small his actions contributed “to the worldwide demand for these images of child abuse”.
At Small’s sentencing hearing, defence advocate Alistair Sloan told the court that his client was a first-time offender who had “not had an easy family upbringing”.
He said Small had suffered a serious assault at the hands of another male while only six years old.
Mr Sloan also revealed that, as a teenager, Small had been exposed to an indecent image “of the nature of what we’re dealing with today”.
He added: “Mr Small has been diagnosed with depression and would have been 21 at the time of these charges”.
No jail for sex offender
Sentencing Small, Sheriff Miller made reference to the seriousness of his crimes and the volume of sex abuse material he had possessed.
The sheriff sentenced Small to a two-year community payback order and a four-month restriction of liberty order.
He also added Small to the sex offenders register for two years.
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