A PROBATION Service expert who helped establish a Home Office blacklist of violent sex offenders appeared at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court yesterday on child porn charges.

Vincent Barron (49), Kirk Rise, Frosterley, County Durham, admitted that between May 1 and August 24 last year at a house in Mid Street, Kirkcaldy, he distributed or showed indecent photographs or pseudo- photographs of children.

Now fired from the probation service, Barron was programme manager of the Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR), which contains details of some of the UK’s most dangerous paedophiles.

Fiscal Ann Gray said that in December a young girl in Glenrothes made allegations of sexual abuse against a Fife man and, as part of the inquiry, this person’s computer was seized and examined by experts.

Within the hard-drive detectives found evidence linking the man at the centre of the allegations with Vincent Paul Barron—namely that Barron had on two occasions sent images to this man’s Email address.

On December 7 last year Fife detectives working with County Durham colleagues raided Barron’s home while he was arrested and taken to Bishop Auckland police station for questioning.

Under interview, Barron admitted, “I use chat rooms to exchange photographs of a sexual and pornographic nature and some of these images will include children under 16.

“I can’t explain ... It was afterwards I feel so guilty and so ashamed because it’s like...it doesn’t make sense.”

The fiscal said that under the Copine Scale, used to gauge paedophilic images from one to 10 in ascending order of severity, those sent by Barron rated between one and four.

Sheriff McNair said before he could sentence Barron he wanted to know exactly where the images fell in the Copine Scale.

Sentence was deferred to January 8 for social inquiry and community service reports and continued Barron’s bail.

Defence solicitor Euen Roy said he would also be ordering a psychiatric examination on his client.