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Police discover thousands of child porn images at Dingwall man's home, Inverness Sheriff Court is told


By Ali Morrison

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Police raided the home of a registered sex offender in Dingwall after receiving intelligence that an electronic device had accessed websites for child porn.

When officers arrived at 31-year-old Liam Mackay's home in Deas Avenue, Dingwall on May 7 2020 to execute a warrant, they discovered a USB stick hidden in the hollow leg of his bed.

Inverness Sheriff Court heard that a cursory examination of it revealed images of children aged between two years and 12 years being abused.

Fiscal depute Alison Young said that forensic analysis discovered 2180 still images and 315 videos and that Mackay was a registered sex offender and on a community payback order.

They were categorised in three rankings of obscenity, the highest being 'A', of which there were 308 images and 171 videos.

In 'B', there were 511 stills and 107 videos, and in 'C', the memory stick had 1361 photographs and 37 videos.

They were created between March and December, 2019.

Mackay admitted downloading indecent images and videos, the play time of which was a total of one day, six hours, three minutes and one second.

Defence solicitor Pauline Gibson asked Sheriff Margaret Neilson to continue Mackay's bail until a background report had been obtained.

The Sheriff agreed but warned Mackay that he should not read anything in to her decision regarding his eventual sentence.

She again placed him on the sex offender's register as she is required to by law.

He will re-appear on January 28.


View our fact sheet on court reporting here




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