A Ross-shire chef has been placed under three years of social work supervision and has to participate in a sex offender’s rehabilitation programme after admitting downloading hundreds of indecent images.
Cameron Gray, 24, had previously pleaded guilty to downloading 685 images of children between June 19 2021 and May 2, 2022 at his address in Fearn near Tain.
Sheriff Eilidh Macdonald told Gray at Inverness Sheriff Court: “You were in possession of foul images of children being abused for your own pleasure and I can never fathom why.”
The court was told that Gray had committed a similar crime after this offence, but because this one pre-dated the second, he had to be treated as a first offender.
‘You come across in the report as being dishonest’
Sentence had been deferred for a background report and Sheriff Macdonald referred to it at sentencing.
She told him: “You come across in the report as being dishonest and I could send you to jail.
“But I think what will benefit you and the wider community is for you to be ordered to be under supervision for three years and take part in the Moving Forward Making Changes programme for sex offenders.”
She also placed him on the sex offender’s register for three years.
At an earlier hearing, fiscal depute Emily Hood told the sheriff that police carried out a search of the property on October 4 2022 and recovered a mobile phone.
Ms Hood said the images on it were all inaccessible to anyone using the phone and involved girls aged between 2 and 14. Many of them were in the highest explicit category.
