A 44-year-old man caught with thousands of sick child abuse pictures and videos in Fife has been jailed for two years.
Scott MacDonald had previously served jail time for similar offences, Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court heard.
He appeared in court by video link to prison to plead guilty to charges of downloading and possessing indecent photos of children.
Prosecutor Christine Allan told the court an address in Percival Street, Kirkcaldy, was searched by police on October 10 last year and MacDonald was there.
Two mobile phones were found, along with a laptop computer.
Forensic officers found one phone contained indecent images of female and male children, ranging from newborn to aged 12.
Cybercrime analysis of the phone found 1689 images and 5,906 videos.
Of those, 361 images and 1,626 videos were rated category A, the most graphic kind.
A video with a run time of seven minutes and 21 seconds, involving female children as young as five being raped, was found on the second phone.
No files were found on the laptop but there were indications of the user accessing child sexual abuse material on browser tabs.
Re-entered ‘dark world’
The court heard MacDonald has previous convictions for analogous offending in 2015 and 2017.
Defence lawyer Kerr Sneddon said her client did do the Moving Forward Making Changes programme when he was last incarcerated and stayed offence-free for about two years after his release in 2021.
Mr Sneddon said MacDonald then re-entered this “dark world”.
Sheriff Steven Borthwick highlighted he was given a lengthy prison sentence in 2017.
The sheriff said: “Despite social work intervention you committed further offences of a similar nature”.
Sheriff Borthwick jailed MacDonald for two years, backdated to October 11 last year when he was first remanded.
MacDonald is on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely.
He pled guilty to taking or permitting to be taken or making indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs between June 11 and October 10 last year.
He admitted a second charge of possessing such photos between July 14 and October 10 last year.
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