A sex offender caught with indecent images of children also broke a court order preventing him from having unsupervised contact with under 17s.
Jake Driver’s mobile phone, which was seized during a police search, contained images of girls aged between 3 and 12.
Inverness Sheriff Court heard that he had also flouted a bail condition requiring that he not have unsupervised conduct with under 17s by being discovered in the company of a 16-year-old girl.
Driver, 21, appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court to admit a charge of taking, permitting to be taken or making indecent images of children, as well as a breach of the special bail condition.
Fiscal depute Robert Weir told the court a search warrant had been granted for Driver’s then home in Glenshiel after police received information from the National Child Abuse Investigation Unit.
He said: “At 8.45am on November 21 2022 police attended at the locus. Present within the property was the now accused, Jake Driver.
“The accused was located within his bedroom and found to be holding a Samsung Galaxy s20 mobile phone.”
Officers seized the phone, which Driver confirmed was his and provided a password for.
Cybercrime officers attended and carried out a preliminary examination of the device, which recovered material featuring abuse of children, after which Driver was arrested and taken to Burnett Road Police Station.
Images of exploitation found on Jake Driver’s phone
A full forensic cybercrime examination of the mobile phone found 37 inaccessible images of exploitation.
“These images were graded A to C and featured young girls aged approximately three to 12-years-old,” Mr Weir told Sheriff Sara Matheson.
Solicitor Clare Russell, for Driver, acknowledged to the court that her client had a previous conviction for a similar offence.
She said that, at the time of the crimes, Driver had not commenced his court-ordered participation in the Moving Forward, Making Changes programme, which is designed to address sexual offending.
‘Making good progress’
Ms Russell said that he had since started the programme and was making good progress.
The defence agent told the court that the bail breach had only been discovered because Driver himself had informed officers he had been in the company of the girl in question.
She said he had believed her to be aged over 17 but conceded: “He should have taken steps to ensure that was the case.”
Sheriff Matheson deferred sentence on Driver, now of Union Street, Inverness, for the production of reports and again placed him on the sex offenders register – the eventual length of registration to be determined at sentencing.
