Internet ‘poster boy’ jailed over haul of child abuse images

A community leader who told police an enormous collection of child abuse images was “his guilty secret” has been jailed.

Adrian Snowball, who was used by a Scottish Government agency as a poster boy for getting people online, initially claimed he had nothing to do with the enormous horde of pictures because he was straight and “had a low sex drive”.

But he later admitted he downloaded the haul of more than 10,000 still images and videos, which were retrieved from his laptop and hard drives after a police raid of his home in the East Neuk.

Snowball, who served as the chairman of East Neuk First Responders, treasurer of the Carnbee and Arncoach Community Council and was part of the area’s development trust, initially denied having anything to do with the sex abuse images being downloaded at his home.

But when confronted by police with forensic evidence secured from his laptop he broke down and said: “It’s time to come clean.”

Snowball then branded the haul his “guilty secret”.

Depute fiscal Vicki Bell told Dundee Sheriff Court yesterday, police had received a tip off in February this year that a Hotmail address linked to Snowball had been used to upload images to a Microsoft cloud storage site.

She said: “The e-mail address was linked to the accused and on February 22 around 8am officers attended to execute a search warrant.

The court heard Snowball had 623 still images and 235 videos at category A – the highest level of depravity – along with 1,270 images and 145 videos at category B and 8,603 pictures and 387 videos at category C.

Snowball, 63, of Main Road, Arncoach, Fife, admitted possessing indecent images of children on February 22 this year.

Sheriff Alastair Carmichael jailed him for six months and placed him on the sex offenders register for 10 years. He said jail was appropriate, given the high number of category A files.