A 52-year-old man whose wife discovered indecent photographs of children on his phone after she became wary of his online activities has avoided a prison sentence.
Spencer Schee was caught with 172 child sexual exploitation and abuse images and eight videos on his Samsung Galaxy X9 phone.
Of these, 43 images and three videos were of the most graphic kind (category A).
The children featured were girls and boys estimated to be between three and 14 years old.
Schee, of Minto Crescent in Glenrothes, appeared in the dock at Dunfermline Sheriff Court for sentencing.
Marriage ended
Defence lawyer Alan Davie told the court his client was “absolutely disgusted” with his own offending.
The lawyer said it has led to the end of his 21-year marriage and 30-year relationship and he is now “estranged” from family and friends and is “very much rock bottom” but is motivated to make changes in his life.
Sheriff Susan Duff told Schee: “I can see you have lost everything in your life as a result of this offence.
“I am satisfied in the circumstances of your case I can impose a non-custodial sentence in the form of a community payback order.”
Sheriff Duff sentenced Schee to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work and imposed a supervision order for 18 months.
Conduct requirements were also imposed on his use of devices to access the internet and for him to not make contact with children under the age of 16 unless this is approved.
Schee was also placed on the Sex Offenders Register for 18 months.
Suspicious wife
Procurator fiscal depute Marie Lyons told the court previously that in 2019, Schee’s wife found out 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 and 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.
The fiscal depute told the court Schee then accessed her phone while she was upstairs and deleted the content.
She 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.
‘Role playing game’
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.
Schee 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.
