A Keith paedophile was caught out after uploading a sick compilation video to a cloud storage service.
Kenneth Hird had more than 18 hours of footage and 398 indecent images of children aged from two to 15 on his devices.
Some of the content featured adults, some other children and some a dog.
Hird, 29, appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court and admitted taking, permitting to be taken or making indecent images of children between March 4 2020 and April 20 2022.
Kenneth Hird had extreme images
He also pled guilty to possessing an extreme pornographic image depicting sexual activity with animals and distributing indecent images of children.
Fiscal depute Susan Love told the court that police had received intelligence about the accused uploading a “compilation of videos of categories A to C to his Dropbox account”.
As a result of this, on April 20 last year, a search warrant was executed at the home Hird shared with his parents in Alexandra Road, Keith.
Officers arrived at the property at 7.45am, Ms Love told the court.
“At this time the father of the accused allowed the police witnesses into the locus where the accused and his mother were present at this time,” she said.
Hird directed officers to his bedroom and identified a mobile phone on the bedside table as belonging to him, this was seized along with other electronics.
Hird made no reply to his subsequent arrest.
Images and videos ‘most severe’
Further investigations found 398 indecent images 21 of which were category A – the most severe.
There were also 171 videos with a combined run time of 18 hours and 33 minutes. 80 of these were also category A.
Hird had also shared three of the videos with a third party via a Kik messaging account.
Solicitor Patrick O’Dea, for Hird, noted the likelihood of a need for presentencing reports and made no representations in mitigation, other than to draw the sheriff’s attention to his client’s timely guilty plea.
Sheriff David Harvie told Hird: “These are serious matters. Before determining what to do next I will call for a criminal justice social work report.”
He placed Hird on the sex offenders register with immediate effect.
He also granted a Crown motion for forfeiture of items related to the case.
