A former swimming pool worker has admitted taking hundreds of illicit images of women both naked and in states of undress leaving his victims shocked and appalled after his conduct came to light.
However, Craig Brown told his trial he had obtained no sexual gratification from the pictures and videos.
Stepping into the witness box at Perth Sheriff Court on Friday, he said had been depressed and suicidal and claimed the pictures had been taken “to give me a reason to feel justified in killing myself”.
The 31-year-old, of Balunie Crescent in Dundee, denied there was any sexual element to the offences and denied even looking at the pictures he had taken.
He claimed to have deleted each of the pictures seconds after they had been taken, training his eye to see only the recycling bin logo as they disappeared off his screen.
Brown also denied there was any element of planning in the selection of targets and said he had simply taken a chance when feeling low.
He was, however, unable to explain how, amid the hundreds of images recovered by investigators, he had managed to avoid taking a single image of a male.
Brown was employed by Dundee City Council as a swimming pool technician and lifeguard when he began taking the images in 2010.
He also undertook roles at Perth Leisure Pool and at a number of Dundee schools where the majority of the images were made.
Only a fraction of the women in the images could be identified by investigating officers. The pictures had been deleted from his mobile telephone, but were able to be recovered by police.
Brown agreed that only he could say how long the images had remained on his phone and what he had done with them.
He did, however, deny having retained them for more than a few seconds and denied having shown them to anyone else or having put them on the internet.
Depute fiscal Carol Whyte posed him the question: “The ladies and gentlemen of the jury will wonder why you bothered taking these images if you were just going to delete them?”
He replied: “It wasn’t the images I was interested in. It was the act. I am still trying to figure out exactly why I did it, but at the time it was to hurt myself.”
Jurors were told that he had undertaken 35 NHS-funded counselling sessions since his arrest.
Brown faces eight charges of recording and taking images of women in changing rooms at Perth Leisure Pool, at Dundee’s Craigie High, Menzieshill High and St John’s RC High schools and at the Red Lion Caravan Park in Arbroath on dates between April 26 2010 and February 8 2012. He denies all the charges.
The trial, before a jury of 10 men and five women, is expected to conclude on Monday.