A paedophile landlord who rigged his guest house to record visitors having sex in their rooms also had a massive stash of horrific child pornography at a lock-up at Perth Airport, it has been revealed in court.
James Stratton (67) hooked up covert cameras in the bedrooms of a guest house and his own home, relaying footage to a garden shed where he recorded it on computer disks and watched it on a large flatscreen TV.
He had so much footage he had to hire a unit at the airport to store it and almost 9000 images and clips of children, some of them in the most serious category of child pornography.
Depute fiscal Charmaine Cole described to Perth Sheriff Court how Stratton’s offences came to light after he and his wife decided to rent out the spare bedrooms in their Muircroft Terrace home to college students. The couple had previously owned the Rosebank House guest house in Dunkeld Road.
Miss Cole said a Muircroft Terrace lodger had a “funny feeling she was being watched” and heard noises in the attic above her room. She was also suspicious of a smoke detector fitted on the ceiling and asked her electrician brother to examine it.
“He went to the house and examined the device and identified it as a covert camera disguised as a smoke detector,” Miss Cole said. “Naturally she was affected by this and she and her brother confronted the accused.
“He initially denied any knowledge of the camera but then admitted he had installed a camera in each spare bedroom and in the hallway.” He told them he had done so after a previous lodger had defecated on bed sheets in one of the rooms.
Miss Cole said the woman was “traumatised” and “felt totally violated” and contacted the police. A search by officers uncovered cameras in each bedroom and the hall and a more extensive probe uncovered another camera in the living room, equipped to record sound as well as images.
Miss Cole said, “The wiring for the cameras led out the house through the garage and into a lock-fast shed in the garden. A search found a hard drive recording device, a camera switcher and a large flatscreen TV within the shed.”
Stratton confessed he had initially been recording his victims using videos in the attic until he saw a couple engaged in homosexual acts which left him “disgusted” and he constructed the more elaborate set-up. His wife had known nothing about his illicit activities and said as many as 12 lodgers could have been filmed in this way.
As the investigation continued it emerged that Stratton had been hiring a storage unit at Perth Airport where police uncovered computers, disks and a video.
Miss Cole said, “On April 29 the Tayside Police support unit began to examine everything that they had recovered. They found the footage taken from the house showed lodgers in various states of undress and engaging in private sexual activity.
“They also noted that some of the footage was not from within the address. They discovered footage from between November 2005 and June 2007 from Rosebank House … of guests in bedrooms.
“From the other disks police found a number of images and video clips. Some were recorded from the equipment taken from the house but the vast majority of the clips were from the storage at Perth Airport.”
There were 8080 indecent pictures of children, over 200 of which fell within level five of the Copine Scale, the most serious category of child abuse images. There were also 622 video clips of children, including 91 particularly depraved level five films.
Stratton pleaded guilty to breaching the peace by setting up the surveillance equipment and filming lodgers at Rosebank House and Muircroft Terrace between November 1, 2005 and April 24, 2009. He also admitted possessing indecent images of children at Muircroft Terrace and at a Perth Airport storage unit.
He will be sentenced on September 14 when reports have been prepared. He has been placed on the sex offenders register and was released on bail.
Rosebank House guest house is now under new ownership.