A Dundee University medical scientist found with hundreds of child abuse images on his Ninewells Hospital office computer has been jailed for two years.
Dr Michael Boylan amassed the photographs, which included images at the most severe on the grading scale, over a period of almost six years.
The 45-year-old who the university has now sacked from his post as manager of the flow cytometry core facility hid some of the material in a folder containing his CV and a staff file.
Boylan had worked at its Medical Research Institute since 2000, but was immediately suspended when the allegations came to light.
Fiscal depute Vicki Bell previously told Dundee Sheriff Court a total of 1,275 images, including 266 at level four and 26 at level five, were recovered from Boylan’s computers. The children in the images were aged between infant and 14.
Two videos at level four were also recovered.
Jim Laverty, defending, asked for the imposition of an “intensive” community payback order with “significant levels of supervision” as an alternative to custody.
Boylan, Priory Road, Newport, admitted possessing indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of children at Ninewells Hospital and his home between August 26 2007 and April 8 2013.
Sheriff Tom Hughes jailed him for two years and put Boylan on the sex offenders register indefinitely.
A Dundee University spokesman said: “The university has cooperated fully with police in the course of their investigations and we will be reviewing our IT security and systems to ensure incidents of this nature cannot happen again.”
For more on this story, see Wednesday’s Courier.