A sex offender freed early from a jail sentence for a horror attack on a child is back behind bars — after he admitted taking child abuse images with him to a meeting at a social work office.
Andrew McLeod was handed a four-year extended jail term last year for a sickening sex attack on a child.
That sentence was to involve two years in custody and an additional two on licence.
He was automatically released after a year in prison — but within weeks had amassed a stash of child abuse images and videos on a mobile phone which had been returned to him by police.
McLeod is now serving out the rest of his original sentence — meaning he is locked up until at least January 2019 — and faces additional time behind bars over the abuse images.
Fiscal depute Saima Rasheed told Dundee Sheriff Court the offence came to light when McLeod told social workers he had been using a social media application on his phone to keep in touch with friends in America.
That prompted public protection officials to impose an extra condition on McLeod meaning he had to hand over his phone for inspection on demand by police.
She said: “On March 31 he attended at the criminal justice social work office for a pre-arranged meeting and signed to say he understood the new condition.
“He said he had owned the phone prior to his prison sentence and had been given it back by the police upon his release.
“He said he had been sent a number of files apparently of adult content and downloaded them. He said he had saved it to show to the police.
“One video of a young child being abused had been viewed in the early hours of that morning and he could not account for that. There were 83 still images and three videos on the phone.”
McLeod, 39, a prison at HMP Perth, admitted a charge of downloading indecent images of children on March 31 this year at Friarfield House, Barrack Street, Dundee.
Defence solicitor Paul Parker Smith said: “The number of images on the phone is fairly low but given he was on licence for a sexual offence it will be regarded as serious by the court.
“He has been recalled to custody and will be there for the foreseeable future.”
Sheriff Tom Hughes deferred sentence until next month for social work background reports.
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