David William Bruce 63

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A LERWICK man who had stored tens of thousands of indecent images of children on his computers will be sentenced early next month.

David William Bruce, of the towns Voderview, admitted a charge of taking or permitted to be taken indecent photographs of children over an almost ten year period between August 2008 and 25 October 2017.

Lerwick Sheriff Court heard on Thursday that police officers had found almost 50,000 indecent images and videos stored on six laptops, 13 mobile phones and a further seven memory cards.

Of the 48,894 images, just over 1,000 were of the most extreme category involving very young children.

Procurator Duncan Mackenzie said some of the images found were of the very worst imaginable.

The fiscal told the court that a further 547,373 images found on Bruces computers were found to be borderline.

He went on to say that 57 year old Bruce had acquired significant expertise in finding and downloading these images, and had done so over a lengthy period and had organised the images in archives in a systematic fashion.

Mackenzie added that there was no suggestion that Bruce had shared the images with anybody else.

Sheriff Ian Cruickshank deferred sentencing until 4 July to allow a criminal justice social work report to be prepared.

Bail was continued, and Bruce was put on the sex offenders register.