A suspicious wife discovered child abuse images on her husband’s phone after she became wary of his online activities.
The woman decided to investigate after finding out her partner-of-30-years had chatted to a younger woman on social media, and posted comments like “stunning” on Facebook photos.
Spencer Schee, 52, appeared at Dunfermline Sheriff Court and admitted possession of obscene photos and videos of children at addresses in Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy, between March 21 and April 8, last year.
Procurator fiscal depute Marie Lyons said that police forensically analysed his Samsung Galaxy X9 phone and found 172 child sexual exploitation and abuse images and eight videos.
Of these, 43 images and three videos were of the most graphic kind (category A), 35 images were classed as category B and a further 94 images and five videos were found to be category C.
The children featured were girls and boys estimated to be between three and 14 years old.
Caught by wife
The depute fiscal said that in 2019, Schee’s wife found our her husband had been commenting “stunning” on adult female photographs on Facebook and had been private messaging a woman aged about 22.
This caused a fallout between the couple, but they reconciled shortly afterwards.
In December 2020, Schee’s wife came home to find him “flustered” on the couch and they argued when she asked him what he was doing.
He would not allow her to look at his phone, the court heard.
His wife formed the opinion he was talking to women online.
In March 2021, she searched through old photos on the Google Cloud app on her husband’s phone while it was unattended.
She found numerous indecent photos and videos containing children, all dated 2020.
She then sent the videos and images to her own phone via Whatsapp, saved them in a picture file and emailed them to a newly created Outlook email account in case he gained access to her phone and deleted them.
‘Role playing game’
The fiscal depute told the court Schee then accessed her phone while she was upstairs and deleted the content.
She then confronted her husband and told him police would be notified and then ended the relationship and evicted him from the marital home.
Police later seized and analysed phones and a laptop.
The court heard a transcript of part of a police interview in which Schee claimed to officers he was chatting to women on a messenger app who talked him into a younger “role playing game.”
During this interview, he denied being attracted to children and said he thought he had deleted the indecent images at the time.
The court heard that Schee had been in a relationship with his wife for about 30 years and married for 21 years.
Schee, of Minto Crescent, Glenrothes, pled guilty to taking or permitting to be taken or making indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children at two addresses in Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy, between March 21 and April 8 last year.
Sheriff Susan Duff deferred sentencing until May 12 for background reports and Schee was released on bail.
