Paedophile visited child sex abuse sites 8,000 times in 18 months, court told
A MAN who used Google and Youtube to access child abuse images thousands of times in just 18 months is facing jail.
Vincent Shannon was able to access depraved images of children as young as two being abused using the biggest search and video sharing websites on the internet.
Dundee Sheriff Court heard Shannon had used the sites for a period of 18 months to search for abuse images – and had gone on to access a Russian website more than 8,000 times in just 18 months, an average of 15 times a day.
Using those sites and file sharing software he downloaded, the 48-year-old amassed a haul of 1,050 indecent images of children and 29 videos – many at the top category of depravity.
Fiscal depute Charmaine Gilmartin told the court that Shannon had used search terms such as “underage”, “pedo”, “lolita” and “incest” to find the sickening images.
She said: “A video showing penetrative sexual activity between two children was recovered from the desktop and shown to be last accessed on July 22, 2017, downloaded from a site which was three minutes and nine seconds long and an accessible video was recovered which shows sexual activity of a female child, which is four minutes and 45 seconds long.
“A TOR Browser has also been installed on the device to provide online anonymity.
“Analysis of the internet history shows the user accessing a Russian website which can be used to host and share indecent images of children had been accessed over 8,000 times between February 6 2016 and July 31 2017.
“Two hundred indecent images of children have been recovered on the device all containing the website name, having been created between April 15 2017 and May 18 2017. The user has utilised Google to search for images of abuse since January 29 2016 and Youtube since February 7 2016.”
Sheriff Alastair Carmichael deferred sentence until next month for social work background reports. Shannon was bailed and
placed on the sex offenders register in the interim.