IT expert's massive child porn stash uncovered by friend's good deed

Published on Thursday 14 April 2011 18:44

AN IT consultant was found with a hoard of more than half a million child pornography pictures after a friend went to tidy up his flat as a favour.

When forensic experts analysed Yeoman Smith's computers, they also discovered footage of him carrying out an indecent act in the presence of a five-year-old girl.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard that 581,649 indecent still images of children and 1,884 moving images were found on equipment and disks after a search of Smith's home. Some of the images featured children who were just a few months old.

Self-employed Smith, 35, admitted possessing the material at his home in Livingstone Place, Edinburgh, on 24 June last year.

He also pleaded guilty to indecent behaviour in the presence of the young girl, and videoing the incident, on 13 August, 2009, in Penicuik, Midlothian.

Advocate depute Gillian More told the court that in May last year, Smith had returned to Shetland for his mother's funeral and to deal with various matters.

A downstairs neighbour contacted a friend of Smith's because of concerns over a potential water leak from the unoccupied flat. The friend got a set of keys and went into Smith's home to turn off the water.

The prosecutor said: "He noticed the flat to be very untidy and on 21 June decided to go to the accused's flat in advance of his return from Shetland to clean and tidy it for him."

The friend found items in the flat which let him to suspect Smith may have been using child pornography.

Ms More said: "He became very uneasy and then remembered the accused showing him a concealed cupboard that was situated in the ceiling of the hall of the property, in which he had seen a bag containing computer disks."

The friend had suspected it contained adult pornography but decided to check and discovered indecent images of young children.

He later contacted police and handed over disks from Smith's cache. Police went to the flat with a search warrant and found laptops, disks and other storage media, as well as printed indecent images of children.

Ms More said that once computers had been analysed "an extremely large number of still and moving indecent images of children were found".

Smith was detained in Shetland and interviewed by police.

The prosecutor said: "He made full admissions of having deliberately obtained from the internet indecent images of children which he had used for his sexual gratification."

It was during police analysis of the haul that investigators found video footage of Smith in the presence of the girl.

Smith was interviewed again and admitted that he had been the man in the video.He claimed to officers that it had been "a one-off incident" of which he was ashamed.

The child and her mother were traced and the woman confirmed that Smith had been a visitor and was alone with the girl for a few minutes.

Defence solicitor advocate Duncan Hughes said that first offender Smith had co-operated fully with police. He said Smith had earlier been allowed bail with conditions that specified he had no unsupervised contact with children under 16, did not use the internet and regularly attended a police station.

Mr Hughes asked the judge, Lord Uist, to allow Smith to remain at liberty while reports were prepared ahead of sentencing. But the judge remanded him in custody.

He told Smith: "You have pled guilty to two very serious offences of a sexual nature."

Lord Uist also placed Smith on the sex offenders' register and continued the case for background and psychiatric reports.