An Aberdeen paedophile has avoided a prison sentence after he was found with images of children involved in sadomasochistic activity.
David Jeffrey, 72, appeared in the dock at Aberdeen Sheriff Court where he admitted being found in possession of dozens of folders packed with hundreds of child abuse images on a USB stick found at his home.
It was stated that the images featured boys and girls as young as three years old taking part in erotic posing and sadomasochistic activity.
More than 300 images were arranged by Jeffrey into 32 separate folders – with each folder named to indicate what sort of abuse was taking place.
USB stick contained hundreds of child images
Fiscal depute Lucy Simpson told the court that police received intelligence National Online Child Abuse Prevention and a search warrant was executed for Jeffrey’s home on March 17 2020.
Various devices were seized and forensically examined.
Within an Apple MacBook belonging to Jeffrey two videos were found that contained child abuse material – one was Category A and involved a boy aged nine and 13 years old.
It appeared to have been included as an attachment in an email from 2014 where Jeffrey spoke to an unknown person about his interest in young boys.
The other was Category C and featured a boy aged between 12 and 15 involved in erotic posing.
A third image was found featuring a boy aged between six and nine, also involved in erotic posing.
A USB stick was also found in Jeffrey’s bedroom containing 306 images of children.
These included boys and girls aged from three to 13 engaged in “sadomasochistic activity, non-penetrative sexual activity and erotic posing”.
The images were arranged into 32 folders that were named to show their contents, such as ‘BDSM’, ‘boy models’, ‘gala boys’, ‘spa boys’ and ‘nude boys’.
An SD card within Jeffrey’s mobile phone also contained three indecent images, one of which was of the most serious category.
These images featured boys aged between four and 10.
His mobile phone also contained six images of children aged between 10 and 12, some were of the most serious category and featured children involved in sexual activity with adults.
In the dock, Jeffrey pleaded guilty to one charge of being in possession of indecent images of children between September 2014 and March 2020.
Sheriff: Your actions ‘contribute to the global demand for child abuse material’
Defence solicitor David Sutherland described the content found on his client’s devices as having “a relatively short run time” and on the “low end of the scale” for what the court ordinarily sees.
Sheriff Andrew Miller reminded Mr Sutherland that his client had been found with “hundreds” of images and that he had a previous conviction for a “similar” offence from 1997.
“An offence of this nature is extremely serious,” he told Jeffrey.
The sheriff added: “It’s commonly recognised by courts that one of the factors that make behaviour like this so serious is the fact that the process of seeking out or possessing these images contributes to the global demand for child abuse material.”
As an alternative to a prison sentence, Sheriff Miller made Jeffrey, of School Walk, Aberdeen, subject to a community payback order with supervision for three years and ordered him to carry out 270 hours of unpaid work.
He also ordered Jeffrey to take part in a sex offenders programme and made him subject to the sex offenders register for three years.
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