A Dunfermline man who downloaded indecent images of children after hearing about it on TV has been sentenced to 225 hours’ unpaid work.
David Paterson, 48, of Inverewe Place, was found to have 94 moving images, rated across levels one to four, on two different hard disk drives linked to his computer.
Only 13 were still accessible to the accused. Police computer forensic officers also discovered 15 still images at level one and a single image at level three.
Depute fiscal Claire Bremner said the accused told police: “It was me, I was curious, there was lots of it on TV at the moment and it was just the once.”
Solicitor Russel McPate said: “At the time of the offence he probably did not appreciate he was embarking on a very serious course of action.”
At Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court on Monday, Paterson admitted that between September 28 and October 2 last year at his home address he took or permitted to be taken or made indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children.
Sheriff James Williamson sentenced Paterson to a three-year community payback order that also included no unsupervised access to children under 16, no access to a computer unless it could retain internet history and placed him on the sex offenders register.