Jail term for Oban paedophile shows public ‘revulsion’

A PAEDOPHILE caught with more than 150,000 indecent images of children at his Oban home has been jailed for 14 months to show ‘the revulsion of society’.

Lliam Martin, 34, of Dungallan Terrace, admitted in April possessing indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of children, between November 14, 2008, and June 21, 2016.

Sheriff Ruth Anderson QC had deferred sentence until May 23, telling Martin to expect prison.

Last Tuesday defence agent Simon Collins told Oban Sheriff Court police had recovered 148,000 sexual images in category C, where A is the most serious in the scale, from Martin’s computers and memory cards.

‘On any reading of the circumstances,’ Mr Collins said, ‘there were a very large number of still and moving images recovered. The vast majority were category C. There were still a number of category A and B. From 2008, he downloaded images from a file-sharing site. The difficulty of any file-sharing sites is you get no idea from the title what is therein.

‘He did not delete things. He spent time cataloguing, and has not deleted any on his computers. And that is part of his propensity to hoard and OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder].’

Sheriff Anderson asked of the category A images: ‘He did not have an interest in them – they just happened to be there?’

Mr Collins replied: ‘He did not get any stimulation from the images when he downloaded them. They were not his interest. His predominant interest is in category C images.

‘He probably has seen them when they came down, but he has not gone back to look at them while they have been on his computer. One would expect them to be deleted, but that is not in Mr Martin’s psyche. He does not clear out his computer.

‘Mr Martin accepted that he has a problem. He has attempted to address it – unsuccessfully. He has since 2015 and onwards relapsed into the same behaviour.’

Sheriff Anderson said: ‘We are not dealing with any physical contact with a child. He has a great deal of photographs and moving images of children. There is only one disposal which is appropriate to mark the revulsion of society. I am conscious of the fact there are in excess of 10,000 category A images, some of them involving children as young as two or three. The vast bulk are category C.’

Sheriff Anderson sentenced Martin to 14 months in prison and placed him on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.