Fife Postman found with indecent images of children escapes jail term

John Majilton amassed a large horde of images, including pictures of teenage celebrities with their faces superimposed on naked bodies and others of naked children with male genitalia superimposed.

Police raided his home after being tipped off that a computer at the property had accessed pornographic images that had been shared online.

Majilton claimed that he had been chatting to people online and they had sent him one set of images that he had then deleted.

But a full examination of his computer by specialist officers found that Majilton had thousands of images stored on it, and evidence that he had sent an image to another online associate through Yahoo’s instant messenger software.

Fiscal depute Kirsten Letford told Dundee Sheriff Court: “When he was asked to explain the presence of the images he said he had never harmed anyone.

“A full examination of the computer was undertaken and his recently accessed files suggested it contained indecent images of female children.

“Files were found containing photos of the faces of female celebrities superimposed on porn images.

“One showed a 15-year-old female celebrity superimposed on a naked adult female.

“Another showed a 22-year-old celebrity superimposed on a child’s body.

“In total there were six images at category A - the highest level - 29 at category B and 2305 at category C.

“There were also two videos.

“Yahoo Messenger was found on the laptop and an examination showed that on February 1 2015 he exchanged indecent images with another user.”

Majilton, 32, of Tayport, Fife, pleaded guilty on indictment to downloading indecent images of children between January 1 2013 and October 26 2015 at an address in Kilmany, Fife.

He further admitted distributing a child abuse image on February 1 2015 at the same address.

Defence solicitor John Boyle said: “Although there’s an acceptance of wrongdoing there’s work that needs to be done to reduce his risk of reoffending.”

Sheriff Alastair Carmichael imposed a community payback order with three years supervision, an order to take part in a sex offender rehabilitation programme and conduct requirements around his use of the internet and interaction with children.

Majilton was also placed on the sex offenders register for three years.