A paedophile has been jailed in Stirling for a year after stashing sick child abuse files, including computer-generated filth, sourced on the dark web.
Robert Young appeared for sentencing after admitting in January taking or making the illicit files over a period of almost a year.
Prosecutor Jamie Hilland told Stirling Sheriff Court previously how police arrived at the pervert’s home at 8.25am on December 15 in 2023 with a warrant.
Officers found Young insidewith his wife.
Young explained to them: “I’m not going to lie to you, a few years ago a friend came to the house and was watching something. I was watching with him.”
The offender, who was at court in a wheelchair, told police he had been at a “low point” after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Dark web-sourced filth
A search of his home was carried out and devices including a tablet and a mobile phone were examined.
In the tablet’s trash folder, police found an image of a girl aged between 10 and 12, sitting naked with her legs spread.
The image was described as being “CGI” but sufficiently realistic enough to fall into category C of indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children.
On Young’s phone, police found 140 more indecent images of children, including as young as four years old.
These included 47 category A, 47 category B and 45 category C and were no longer accessible to the user.
Their creation dates spanned up until two weeks before the police raid and included images of children being abused by adults.
Police analysis suggested the images had been sourced on the dark web using a specialist browser and evidence of a VPN, used to disguise a device’s IP address, was also found.
Officers also uncovered a further 351 “borderline or indicative” sexual photographs.
Young, 34, pled guilty to taking or making indecent images of children at his home in Kings Court, Alloa, between December 30 2022 and December 15 2023.
He was also placed on the sex offenders register for a decade.
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