Teenager in court for downloading child porn

A 15-YEAR-OLD schoolboy downloaded hardcore child pornography videos after finding tips on what to search for on a public message board.

Patrick Collins told a trial he was searching for videos he thought would be "funny" but he was caught with several images of young children involved in sex acts.

One of the clips showed two adults - with their faces replaced by pictures of cats - engaged in a sex act as a child looked on, Perth Sheriff Court heard.

Collins, now 17, was placed on the Sex Offenders Register after being found guilty of possessing child porn images at his home in Dawsons Court, Kinross, between May 2009 and February 2010.

The court was told that Collins, who was a pupil at Kinross High School at the time, had sent his computer in to be repaired because it had been infected with a virus.

A computer shop manager told the court how he discovered child porn on the Collins' family computer when it was brought in to him for repair.

He said he was clearing up files to make the computer run faster when he recognised the phrase PTHC - meaning pre-teen hardcore - from a previous case.

He said: "Some of the file names were strange and worried me. They seemed to be of an inappropriate nature. It said PTHC. I immediately felt very sickened. I felt I had a duty to inform the police."

Collins told the court he had been using a peer-to-peer filesharing site to download what he believed would be footage of adult pornography.

Tayside Police computer analyst Andrew Hopkins showed the court a selection of the images found on the computer which featured children naked and involved in sex acts in sex acts.

Sheriff Lindsay Foulis found Collins guilty and deferred sentence for reports.