Edinburgh man who downloaded thousands of child abuse images placed on the Sex Offenders Register

An Edinburgh man has been placed on the Sex Offenders Register after he was caught with thousands of horrific child abuse images.

Thomas Carroll, 58, downloaded more than 2800 still pictures of children being sexually abused by adults including images of rape over a near four year period. He was also found to have accessed 634 videos of abuse with more than half being rated as Category A - the most vile end of the spectrum.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told on Tuesday that Police Scotland received intelligence in November last year that the images were being accessed at Carroll’s home at the Wester Hailes area of the capital. Officers attended at the property with a search warrant at around 8.15am on December 20 last year and found the offender home alone.

Fiscal depute Jennifer McLaren told the court two mobile phones, two USB devices and a laptop were seized from the home. A subsequent cyber crime investigation showed three of the devices held thousands of indecent images of children. The fiscal said a total of 2,823 images and 634 videos of children being sexually abused had been stored on the devices.

Solicitor Kevin Connor, defending, said there were “clearly a lot of images” discovered and he acknowledged his client was facing “a very serious matter”.

Sheriff Ian Anderson placed Carroll on the Sex Offenders Register for a term still to be determined and deferred sentence for the preparation of social work reports to next month.

Carroll, who is a first offender, was granted bail and wore a face mask in an attempt to hide his identity when he left the city centre court building this afternoon. He had pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children at his home between January 9, 2019 and December 20 last year.