A prominent Dundee University medical scientist faces the sack after being found with hundreds of child abuse images on his Ninewells Hospital office computer.
Dr Michael Boylan amassed thephotographs, which included images at the most severe end of the grading scale, over a period of almost six years.
The 45-year-old who is suspended from his post as manager of the flowcytometry core facility hid some of the material in a folder containing his CV and a staff file.
The university said it will take “action appropriate to the severity of the offence” against Boylan, who had worked at its Medical Research Institute since 2000.
Fiscal depute Vicki Bell told Dundee Sheriff Court: “During March 2014, police received intelligence that a device using an IP address positioned in the office of the accused at his place of work was connected to the internet and contained indecent images of children.”
Police raided the office at 7.45am and Boylan’s home shortly after 9am, seizing computer equipment. Boylan arrived for work at 9.15am and was told the reason for police being there.
He attended Bell Street headquarters on a voluntary basis, but by then a preliminary examination of one of the work computers showed it contained indecent imagesof children and he was arrested.
Miss Bell said a total of 1,275 images, including 266 at level four and 26 at level five, were recovered from the computers. The children in the images were aged between infant and 14.
Two videos at level four were alsorecovered.
Miss Bell added that various websites including the terms ‘little model’ and ‘top 100 pre-teen’ had been visited on one day in 2013.
She said: “Some of the indecent images were found in a file called ‘March Tidy’ which also contained documents including a Dundee University staff performance management document in the name Michael Boylan as well as further medical documentation and a CV in the name Dr Michael Boylan.”
Boylan, of Priory Road, Newport,admitted taking or permitting to be taken or making indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of children at NinewellsHospital, Dundee, and his home, between August 26 2007 and April 8 2013.
Placing Boylan on the sex offendersregister, Sheriff Tom Hughes deferredsentence until January 28 for reports.
A Dundee University spokesman said: “The university has cooperatedfully with police in the course of theirinvestigations and we will be reviewing our IT security and systems to ensure incidents of this nature cannot happen again.”