Obscene video clips found on laptop

A gutter cleaner caught with obscene videos of children was yesterday placed on the sex offenders register.

Niall Gordon, 29, stored the films on a laptop at his home in Dunblane, Perthshire, behind his fiancée’s back.

Stirling Sheriff Court was told that his address was raided after Police Scotland’s computer crime unit “received intelligence” that an internet connection at the property had been used to access indecent images of children.

Officers with a search warrant found 15 indecent videos featuring children on Gordon’s computer.

Prosecutor Sarah Lumsden said 10 of them were in the most serious A-category, which, as defined by the Sentencing Council’s Sexual Offences Definitive Guidelines, involves penetrative sexual activity, and/or sadism and bestiality.

Miss Lumsden said all the children in the videos were girls, aged nine to 14.

Gordon was arrested and claimed he gained no sexual satisfaction from viewing the videos, which he watched between April and June last year.

He claimed to have stumbled on videos while trying to download music, and said it “disgusted” him.

Miss Lumsden said: “He couldn’t explain why he continued to view it.

He was read his rights and said he had no sexual interest in children, and it had ruined his life.”

Miss Lumsden said Gordon’s then-fiancée Sarah Driscoll had been out when police raided their address, at 7.30 am on October 26, but was contacted and returned quickly and said she was not aware Gordon had been accessing the material, which she had never seen.

Gordon, of Coldstream Avenue, Dunblane, originally from Aberdeen, pleaded guilty to downloading child abuse images between April and July last year at the address, where he had lived with his fiancée for three years. The court heard he had been seeing a psychotherapist since his arrest.

Sheriff Wyllie Robertson placed Gordon on the sex offenders register and deferred sentence until early June for background reports.