Fife man had more than half-a-million indecent images

A Fife man has been jailed after being caught with more than half-a-million indecent images of children.

Graham Birnie, of Mount Pleasant, Cupar, also had thousands of extreme pornography images showing people sexually abusing animals.

The 57-year-old admitted possessing a total of 728,000 indecent images and videos, some of which were at the most extreme end of the scale.

Birnie used his laptop to search for the material and duplicated it on to storage sticks, his mobile, and external hard drives for more than four years.

Police raided his home, which he shares with his elderly mother, in October last year after receiving a tip-off that illegal material was being downloaded at the address.

His solicitor, Scott Norrie, told Dundee Sheriff Court his client had become a “recluse”.

He said yesterday: “He has been open and candid with the social work department.

“He has admitted that the images were for sexual gratification, which is something that is often denied by people who commit this type of offence.

“He resides with his 90-year-old mother and has effectively become an unofficial carer for her.

“He had become somewhat of a recluse.”

Birnie pled guilty to two charges of downloading indecent images of children and possessing extreme pornographic images depicting in an explicit and realistic way sexual activity between human adults and animals between February 13 2014 and October 10 last year.

Sheriff Lorna Drummond QC, who jailed Birnie for 58 weeks, said: “These are serious offences and I am bound to take into account the number of these images. We are in the hundreds of thousands of images, even if some were duplicates.

“I’ve taken into account everything said on your behalf but there is no option other than a custodial sentence.”

Birnie was also placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years.