A Fife pervert who stole women’s underwear and sex toys been jailed for distributing sick child abuse videos.
Kieran Watson was caught with hundreds of pictures and videos on his phone and laptop.
They included images of children engaging in sexual activity with adults and animals and sexualised cartoon-type portrayals of youngsters.
Most of the abuse files featured female children aged between infant and 14.
Watson earlier pled guilty to taking or making indecent photos or pseudo-photos of children between December 29 2022 and January 4 last year and distributing indecent photos of children between May 28 and June 4 2023.
The 27-year-old appeared for sentencing at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court.
High-risk offender
Sheriff John MacRitchie noted social workers had assessed Watson as having a high likelihood of reoffending and failure to acknowledge his deviancy.
The sheriff said Watson had twice been convicted in the past for theft by housebreaking.
He pointed out that there was a sexual element to previous offending “involving the theft of female underwear and sex toys”.
The sheriff said: “The offending is particularly aggravated by the extremely young ages of some children in these images.”
Sheriff MacRitchie said Watson also blames the community for “treating him like a sex offender” after previous convictions and says that is why he acted as he did.
He also blames social workers for “giving the idea” for such offending through a requirement to participate in the Moving Forward Making Changes programme.
The sheriff jailed Watson for 18 months, reduced from two years due to the stage of his guilty plea.
Watson, of Bethelfield Place, Kirkcaldy, was put on the sex offenders register for ten years.
Sick chats
Prosecutor Sarah Smith told the court previously police searched Watson’s home on January 4 after receiving intelligence his email address had uploaded child sexual abuse material to the internet.
A mobile phone and laptop were recovered from his bedroom and a total of 716 files – 435 images and 281 videos – were found on the phone, the “vast majority” featuring female children aged 14 and under.
The run-time of the videos was nearly eight hours.
Of the vile material, 156 images and 185 videos were of the most graphic category A kind.
The files show children engaged in penetrative sexual activity with adults and other children, and nude sexualised posing.
Ms Smith said 134 image files depicted child characters – cartoon and computer-generated – engaging in sexual activity.
On the laptop, 30 files – including 18 category A images – were found to contain abuse material, featuring children aged between two and 12 and sexual activity between children and animals.
Watson had been using the Kik Messaging app and email to distribute child sexual abuse material.
Conversations recovered from it showed he initially requested indecent images before swapping adult pornography and engaging in discussion about children.
He received images and videos and sent a category A video involving a girl aged about six, and a category C image of a nude female between four and six years old.
There were email conversations in which Watson received category A videos.
He then sent two category A videos and a category B video involving children as young as seven.
‘Isolated’ after underwear thefts
He was caught through DNA recovered from blood he left in the room.
Defence lawyer David McLaughlin said his client has felt isolated and struggled in the community since that conviction and other people have “made his life difficult” following media reports.
He said Watson had been drinking alcohol at the time of the more recent offences to alleviate difficulties in his life and during most of the conduct he would have been under the influence and “it is not an interest of his”.
The sentence was backdated to November 26 when Watson was remanded.
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