eBay dealer caught with child porn is banned from internet

Published on Tuesday 22 January 2008 13:59

AN eBay dealer who was caught with a horde of child porn has been banned from using the internet.

Nigel Childs walked free from court today despite being found with a stash of more than 1100 hardcore child-porn images.

Online motorcycle parts dealer Childs, who used to be manager of an Edinburgh motorcycle store, begged the court not to ban him from the internet because it would hamper his trading on eBay.

But Sheriff Robert McCreadie said it was appropriate to forbid Childs from accessing the internet when he was alone.

Perth Sheriff Court was told that Childs was found with images of children as young as four.

Detective Sergeant David Black showed a sample of the images to the court and said some were at the worst end of the scale.

He said the 1126 images found on Childs' computer ranged from girls posing to pre-school children being raped.

The court was told that Childs was caught by chance in the wake of an unrelated investigation.

Childs, 50, of Leven Place, Kinross, admitted possessing indecent images of children at his home between August 2005 and March 2007.

Solicitor Cliff Culley, defending, said: "He has accepted he does have a problem and he wishes to address that problem. It is a serious offence."

Sheriff McCreadie placed Childs on a 7pm – 7am curfew for five months and imposed a probation order for a period of three years. He will be on the Sex Offenders' Register throughout that period.

As conditions of probation, Childs was told to have no unsupervised access to children or the internet, and ordered to co-operate with the Tay Project rehabilitation scheme for sex offenders.