A pervert’s cache of child abuse images was uncovered by his shocked partner after she used his phone to take a photograph of a bird.
Vincent Ferrier loaned the phone to his wife, who later saw the sick material when she tried to forward the bird picture to her own device.
The 46-year-old later told the woman he had been searching online after half-remembering an incident in which he was sexually abused.
Among the vile photographs were images depicting babies, as well as sadism.
Fiscal depute Alistair McDermid told Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court the woman took Ferrier to hand himself in at the town’s police station.
Stumbled across images
The prosecutor said: “The locus was the home address of the accused and his wife.
“On April 27 2022 they were at the locus and at around 11pm a small bird landed in their garden.
“His wife took a photo of the bird on the accused’s phone.
“A short time later, the accused went to bed and fell asleep with the phone on the bedside table.
“At around 1am his wife got the phone with the intention of sending the image to herself.
“She opened WhatsApp and the app displayed not only images of the bird but a number of other images.
“Some of these appeared to be pornography, so she went into the accused’s “hidden” folder (in his camera roll).
“She observed a large number of indecent images of children on the phone.
“She shouted ‘what the f*** is this?’ And the accused stated ‘it is what it looks like’.”
‘Blurry memory’
Ferrier later told the woman the photos had “done nothing for him” and he had been searching due to a “blurry memory” of someone “doing something to him”.
She took him to the police station, where officers found 1,344 indecent images of children, aged up to 12, including babies.
Of these 419 were of category A – the worst kind – 370 at category B and 555 at category C.
All of the images were “inaccessible”, indicating they had been deleted from the phone.
Ferrier, of East Wemyss, admitted taking or permitting to be taken indecent images of children at an address in Kirkcaldy between July 2021 and April 2022.
Sentence was deferred for reports to be prepared on first offender Ferrier.
He was placed on the Sex Offenders Register in the interim.
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