A 57-year-old Dundee man caught with a hoard of child abuse images has been told to expect a “significant” jail sentence.
Graham MacFarlane wept in the dock as the court was told how he accumulated and shared hundreds of videos and thousands of pictures, some involving children as young as one.
Police also found mobile phone footage MacFarlane had secretly recorded of a girl undressing.
Some of the downloaded material was at the highest level of the scale used to measure child abuse images.
MacFarlane, of Seagate, admitted three charges on indictment that between June 30 2011 and June 30 2012 he downloaded and distributed indecent images of children and on January 13 2012 he recorded, without consent, a girl under the age of 16 removing her clothing with the intent of him or others viewing the image.
MacFarlane sat with his head in his hands as details of the offences were read out in court on Tuesday.
He was bailed on the conditions he has no unsupervised contact with children or accesses the internet. Sentence was deferred until July 16.
Fiscal depute Isma Mukhtar said MacFarlane had started downloading and sharing the material after being introduced to child abuse images by people he met at a sauna in Edinburgh.
She said: “In June 2012 the accused first came to the attention of police as a consequence of him conversing with a person in Canada on a chatroom about sharing images of children.
“Tayside Police detained him at his home and recovered two laptops, a notebook, a hard drive and a mobile phone.
“He said some of the equipment would have indecent images on them, including some of children under the age of five. In total, 4,646 still images and 759 videos were recovered.”
Dundee Sheriff Court heard MacFarlane had a shared folder on his computer where other online users could look at and distribute the images.
He told officers he had never had sexual contact with a child and all the computer equipment had been kept in his van.
MacFarlane’s solicitor Rosemary Scott said her client admitted downloading the images and had fully cooperated with the police.
She said: “He very much regrets the offences and is aware of how seriously the court views this and the children in these pictures are victims. He is very ashamed and embarrassed.”
Ms Scott told the court other users had to be invited to view the shared files and they were not readily accessible on the internet.
Sheriff George Way told MacFarlane: “What’s most concerning is there are 25 moving images.
“You should be under no illusions here. I can conceive of nothing except considering a significant custodial sentence in this case.
“With regards to bail, I am going to give you time to put your affairs in order.”