Two years’ jail for man, 71, with over 110,000 child abuse images at home

A paedophile who amassed a collection of more than 110,000 child abuse photos and videos at his home in Dunblane has been jailed for more than two years.

Ronald Brunton (71), was sentenced to 27 months in prison when he appeared at Falkirk Sheriff Court yesterday (Thursday).

He was also given an additional extended sentence of 18 months, to be served after his release, and was placed on the sex offenders’register for life.

Police raided his home on February 7 last year and found 101,082 child abuse images and 11,353 child abuse movies on a tower computer, laptop, tablet, two external hard drives and three boxes of old-style discs.

In December he pleaded guilty to possessing and downloading the images between 1996, and last year when he was caught.

The court heard this week that 15,000 of the still images and nearly 7000 of the videos were classified by experts as category A – the most serious kind.

Sheriff Craig Caldwell rejected a call from Brunton’s lawyer Harry Couchlin to use a community disposal. appropriate disposal.

He said the still images were“frankly vile”and the videos showed“the most horrific abuse of young children”.

The sheriff said:“You catalogued your collection carefully and conscientiously in order to make its access more easy, and that is a significant aggravating factor.”

In addition, a social background report revealed that Brunton had continued to access pornography online –“albeit on the face of it legal pornography”– despite warnings from the police between the time proceedings started and his sentencing.