A Fife paedophile has admitted downloading footage of children as young as one being sexually abused.
Luke Ramage from Lochgelly pled guilty to downloading indecent images and videos of children over an six-month period.
Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court heard how Ramage – who turned 20 on the day of the court appearance – complained in a WhatsApp chat that child abuse material had been lost from a device and asked for help in recovering it.
Among the cache, Ramage – referred to in court as “Bea” and understood to be transitioning to female – had images of young girls being raped.
The footage depicted male and female children between the ages of one and nine.
Fiscal depute Sarah Smith, who referred to Ramage with the preferred “their” pronoun, said police received a tip-off that led them to raid the Kirkcaldy address at which Ramage was staying.
She said: “At about 8.35am detective constables executed a search warrant.
“They were afforded entry by the accused’s stepfather. The accused and their mother were also within the address.
“During the search officers seized two mobile phones.
“The accused confirmed both phones were theirs and they provided the passcodes.
“A preview examination was carried out on both phones and both were positive for child sexual abuse material and the accused was arrested as a result.”
Phones packed with filth
One phone was found to contain 23 images and eight videos.
18 were unique, with the rest being duplicates caused by interaction with the files.
The videos on the first phone had a runtime of 20 minutes and 17 seconds, with all being category A, the worst kind.
Ms Smith said there were a number of searches on the phone’s internet browser, including “child porn”, “baby porn” and “infant porn”, along with the WhatsApp conversation asking for help recovering lost files.
The second phone had 109 images and 28 videos, which had a total runtime of 50 minutes and five seconds, with all also being of the worst category.
The accused, of Lochgelly, admitted downloading abuse material between March and September 2024.
Sentence was deferred for reports and Ramage was placed on the sex offenders register in the interim.
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