A 46-year-old Scottish man downloaded more than half a million images of child pornography over an eight-year period.
According to The Press and Journal, Bryan Reid was caught with 521,395 indecent images of girls – ranging from newborns to 15-year-olds – and nearly five days worth of pornographic videos which he stored in hard drives at his home in Buckie, Moray.
Procurator Fiscal Alex Swain told Elgin Sheriff Court yesterday that Reid created specifically named folders to store the material – examples of which included “best of”, “pre-teen” and “keepers”.
Sheriff Gary Aitken deferred sentence until May 17 for the production of social work and psychological reports and placed Reid on the sex offenders’ register. He was released on bail.
Miss Swain told Elgin Sheriff Court yesterday that Reid, of The Old Mariners House in the Yardie area of Buckie, was at his nephew’s house in the town when police attended and told him about the nature of the inquiry, to which Reid replied: “I am the one who is involved. I always knew I would get caught.”
Miss Swain went on to tell the court that police carried out a search of his home, adding: “The devices were subsequently examined and revealed a massive number of indecent images of children.”
She said that this included a computer tower with four hard drives, 14 other separate hard drives and eight USB sticks.
A total of 521,395 indecent images were found as a result of the search, comprising 5,270 category A, the most graphic type, 6,468 category B and 509,657 category C.
There were also 1,395 indecent videos identified, including 189 category A images, 98 category B and 1,108 category C. Miss Swain told the court that this equated to a total run time of four days and 23 hours.
Miss Swain told the court that it became apparent from Reid’s devices that it would “take months” to complete an analysis, and that there were “more images” which had not been manually reviewed. She added: “They stopped reviewing once they got to the figures outlined.”
Reid admitted taking, permitting or making indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children and possessing them at The Old Mariners House in Buckie or elsewhere between October 1, 2009 and August 9 last year.
Miss Swain told the court that Reid was cautioned and charged on August 9 and appeared in private at Elgin Sheriff Court and made no plea and was committed for further examination.
Miss Swain said that Reid had no previous convictions on his record prior to this offence.
She said that Reid has made “open and frank admissions” about his offence throughout the process and that, when speaking to police, stated he had been accessing the images for years.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Telegraph website. For more information, read about our new combined website.